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Article published In: Spanish in Context
Vol. 20:3 (2023) ► pp.464–489

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Discourse markers in Spanish in the Tijuana-San Diego border area

 | Western Washington University
 | University of California, San Diego
Published online: 21 December 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.21002.mat
Abstract
This study examines the use of discourse markers among speakers of Spanish residing in Tijuana, Mexican immigrants in San Diego, and heritage Spanish speakers in San Diego. We find a core set of discourse markers that is common to all speakers, as well as subsets of discourse markers for Tijuana, San Diego immigrant, and San Diego heritage speakers. Four English discourse markers are attested in the border: okay as a general, established borrowing; so only among immigrant and heritage speakers; and like and you know only among heritage speakers. In a language-contact situation, discourse markers whose lexical content is less analyzable and whose functions are more operational detach first from the pragmatically-dominant language (Matras, Yael. 1998. “Utterance modifiers and universals of grammatical borrowing.” Linguistics 36 (2): 281–331. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). We find that the operational properties of okay, like, and you know make them borrowable into the Spanish of the border. However, so is borrowed in San Diego with operational and content-related features by heritage speakers, and with content-related features only by immigrant speakers.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Discourse markers and pragmatic detachability
  • 3.Discourse markers in U.S. Spanish
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Speakers and the language-contact situation
    • 4.2Interview segments
    • 4.3Repertoire of discourse markers
  • 5.Quantitative analysis
    • 5.1Number of speakers
    • 5.2Frequency of use
    • 5.3Discussion of quantitative analysis
  • 6.Qualitative analysis: English discourse markers in the Spanish of the border area
    • 6.1The status of okay in Tijuana and San Diego
    • 6.2The status of so in Tijuana and San Diego
    • 6.3Pragmatic detachability of English discourse markers in Border Spanish
  • 7.Conclusion: The status of discourse markers in the Tijuana-San Diego border area
  • Notes
  • References
References (23)
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