Entre el ofrecimiento y la orden: la reproducción de peticiones en secuencias de estilo directo en entrevistas semidirigidas

• Main Author: Sampedro Mella María
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: De Gruyter 2021-06-01
• Series: Pragmática Sociocultural
• Subjects: actos de habla; petición; imagen social; discurso directo; entrevista semidirigida; speech acts; request; direct speech; face; sociolinguistic interview
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/soprag-2021-0001

Request is a speech act which has been thoroughly researched in Spanish bibliography, especially through linguistic surveys. In this paper, request is analyzed from a new viewpoint: the reproduction of requests in direct speech. In order to undertake this research, a subcorpus made of 112 examples of direct style, which contain requests, has been compiled from a selection of corpora from sociolinguistic interviews in north-central Peninsular Spanish. Two kinds of requests have been distinguished according to their original context: on the one hand, requests produced in service encounters and, on the other hand, in interactions with close individuals. Then, the linguistic strategies used in the expression of this speech act have been classified in those more direct, which make requests similar to orders, and those more indirect, which bring them closer to offers. Based on the compiled data, the possible variations in the expression of this speech act are analyzed in the two linguistic exchanges. Furthermore, the analysis explores the possible influence of the communicative context –the sociolinguistic interview– in the verbal expression, due to the interest of the speakers to show a more formal, and appropriate for the new context, face.