"Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish" provides the reader with a representative spectrum of current research in the most dynamic areas of the pragmatics of Spanish. It brings together a collection of academic essays written by well-established as well as emerging voices in Hispanic pragmatics. The essays include applications of pragmatic concepts to sub-fields of (Spanish) linguistics (i.e., pragmatics and grammar; pragmatics and applied linguistics; pragmatics and cross- and inter-cultural communication), studies of traditional topics in pragmatics (i.e., discourse markers, politeness, metaphor, humour) as well as a proposal to amalgamate the dominant pragmatic approaches, namely socio-pragmatics and cognitive pragmatics, into one comprehensive model. The essays in this collection represent both new theoretical and empirical research and as such they constitute a valuable contribution to the field of pragmatics in general and an essential reference to those researching the pragmatics of Spanish.

The aim of this book is to present a comprehensive picture of the current state of Spanish learner corpus research (SLCR), which makes it unique, since no other monograph has focused on collecting research dealing with learner corpora of any language other than English. In addition to an introductory appraisal of current SLCR, as well as a wake-up call reminding us that learner corpus design still needs to be improved, this volume features a selection of original studies ranging from general issues concerning learner corpora compilation to more specific aspects such as phonetic, lexical, grammatical and pragmatic features of the interlanguage of learners of Spanish, as reflected in corpus data. This volume will undoubtedly be of significant interest to researchers involved in corpus linguistics, second language acquisition research, as well as to professionals in the field of Spanish as a second language, including teachers, and creators and publishers of teaching materials.

The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Pragmatics is the first volume to offer a comprehensive overview of advances in Spanish Pragmatics, addressing different types of interaction and the variables, both social and linguistic, that can affect them. Written by a diverse set of experts in the field, the handbook unifies two major approaches to the study of pragmatics, the Anglo-American and European Continental traditions. Thirty-three chapters cover in detail both pragmatic foundations (e.g. speech act theory, implicature and relevance, deixis) and interfaces with other concepts, including: • Discourse • Variation; Culture and interculture • (Im)politeness; humor • Learning contexts and teaching • Technology This is an ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, and researchers of Spanish language and linguistics.

The first substantial textbook on pragmatics to focus on Spanish. The authors discuss key theories within the Anglo-American tradition of pragmatics, concentrating on the relationship between language use and socio-cultural contexts, and their uptake by Hispanists. Drawing on research by foremost scholars in the field, with reference to a wide range of 'Spanishes', including a first treatment of 'sociopragmatic variation'. Concepts throughout are illustrated with real language examples taken from different Spanish corpora. The book is carefully structured to be appropriate for upper-level undergraduate, as well as postgraduate, students.

This volume addresses some lacunae in Hispanic linguistic research by focusing on new scholarly directions, exploring understudied topics as well as speech communities, and presenting new takes on relevant linguistic and sociocultural issues. This publication answers questions which have emerged as a result of the rapid increase in Hispanic linguistic research since the latter part of the twentieth century or that have remained open in spite of it. With the rapid growth of Hispanic Linguistics during the 21st century, the topics included in this volume are representative of the breadth, vitality, and interdisciplinarity of contemporary linguistic scholarship. They also reflect that linguistics, in general, has become more methodologically sophisticated. This book is comprised of twelve chapters divided into three parts. Part I addresses language ideology and language contact issues that are embedded in important sociolinguistic and cultural topics chronologically spanning from the 16th century to the present. Although these issues take place in Spain, the United States, Turkey and Ecuador, they pertain ideologically to all corners of the Hispanic World and beyond. Part II is devoted to pragmatics and language variation with topics that transport us to Colombia, Mexico, Spain and Venezuela. The study of politeness strategies shows how Spanish speakers reduce social distance between interlocutors as they make conversation a pleasant and cooperative meeting place. Concurrently, sociolinguistic innovations reveal interesting parallels among several speech communities. Part III explores linguistic variation as it relates to theoretical, structural, and instructional issues. Although these topics are analyzed based mainly on linguistic usage in Bolivia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Panama, and Spain – as with the rest of this volume – their relevance reaches far beyond the confines of the Hispanic World. This book is unique in multiple ways and complements a number of existing publications.

The Enciclopedia de Linguistica Hispánica provides comprehensive coverage of the major and subsidiary fields of Spanish linguistics. Entries are extensively cross-referenced and arranged alphabetically within three main sections: Part 1 covers linguistic disciplines, approaches and methodologies. Part 2 brings together the grammar of Spanish, including subsections on phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Part 3 brings together the historical, social and geographical factors in the evolution of Spanish. Drawing on the expertise of a wide range of contributors from across the Spanish-speaking world the Enciclopedia de Linguistica Hispánica is an indispensable reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Spanish, and for anyone with an academic or professional interest in the Spanish language/Spanish linguistics.

Service encounters are ubiquitous in social interaction. We buy food and everyday items in supermarkets, convenience stores, or markets; we purchase merchandise in department stores; or we request information at a visitor information center. This book offers a comprehensive account of service encounters in commercial and non-commercial settings. Grounded in naturally occurring face-to-face interactions and drawing on a pragmatic-discursive approach, J. César Félix-Brasdefer sets out a framework for the analysis of transactional and relational talk in various contexts in the United States and Mexico. This book investigates cross-cultural and intra-lingual pragmatic variation during the negotiation of service. The author provides a broad review of research on service encounters to date, and analyzes characteristics of sales transactions, such as participants' roles, pragmatic and discourse functions of relational talk and address forms, the realization of politeness, and changes in alignment from transactional to relational talk.

Speech acts are an important and integral part of day-to-day life in all languages. In language acquisition, the need to teach speech acts in a target language has been demonstrated in studies conducted in the field of interlanguage pragmatics which indicate that the performance of speech acts may differ considerably from culture to culture, thus creating communication difficulties in cross-cultural encounters. Considering these concerns, the aim of this volume is two-fold: to deal with those theoretical approaches that inform the process of learning speech acts in particular contextual and cultural settings; and, secondly, to present a variety of methodological proposals, grounded on research-based ideas, for the teaching of the major speech acts in second/foreign language classrooms. This volume is a valuable theoretical and practical resource not only for researchers, teachers and students interested in speech act learning/teaching but also for textbook writers wishing to have an informed opinion on the pedagogical implications derived from research on speech act performance.

The focus of this volume is on semantic and pragmatic change, its causes and mechanisms. The papers gathered here offer both theoretical proposals of more general scope and in-depth studies of language-specific cases of meaning change in particular notional domains. The analyses include data from English, several Romance languages, German, Scandinavian languages, and Oceanic languages. Detailed case-studies covering central semantic domains, such as concession, evidentiality, intensification, modality, negation, scalarity, subjectivity, and temporality, allow the authors to test and refine current models of semantic change, by focusing, for instance, on the respective roles of speakers and hearers in the process and on the relationship between semantic and syntactic reanalysis. Key theoretical notions, such as presuppositions, paradigms, word order, and discourse status are revisited in a diachronic perspective to provide innovative accounts of causes and motivations for linguistic changes. A prominent theme is the evolution of procedural meanings of various kinds. Thus, several papers feature different types of pragmatic markers as their object of study, while others are concerned with items and constructions expressing modality, evidentiality, negation, and relational meanings. Closely related themes are: the interface between semantics and pragmatics/discourse, with figurative uses of language, rhetorical-argumentational strategies, discourse traditions, information structure, and the importance of dialogic contexts in change playing a salient role in several papers; the relationship between meaning change and processes such as grammaticalization, subjectification and pragmaticalization; and, the thorny issue of the categorization of linguistic items such as discourse markers or modal particles, evidentials or epistemic modals, to which the diachronic data are shown to contribute substantially. The volume will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in the fields of semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, grammaticalization, and historical linguistics.

This collection combines research from the field of (im)politeness studies with research on language pedagogy and language learning. It aims to engender a useful dialogue between (im)politeness theorists, language teachers, and SLA researchers, and also to broaden the enquiry to naturalistic contexts other than L2 acquisition classrooms, by formulating 'teaching' and 'learning' as processes of socialization, cultural transmission, and adaptation.