The Pragmatics of Well and Bueno in English and Spanish

• Published in: Intercultural pragmatics 2005-01, Vol.2 (1), p.69-92
• Main Authors: Garcia Vizcaino, Maria Jose, Martinez-Cabeza, Miguel A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1612-295X; 1613-365X
• DOI: 10.1515/iprg.2005.2.1.69

The aim of this paper is to investigate the pragmatic functions of the discourse markers well and bueno and to distinguish which of those functions are related to politeness phenomena in English and Spanish. For that purpose, our inquiry will be based on an analysis of different types of discourse samples taken from spoken corpora. The corpus for this study has been obtained from the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus Oral de Referencia del Español Contemporáneo (COREC) developed at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Our results indicate that well and bueno function in a similar way by playing up both pragmatic and textual roles, all of them within the scope of four rapport management domains (Spencer-Oatey 2000, 2002), namely, illocutionary, discourse, participation, and stylistic domains. However, we contend that a strict distinction between textual and pragmatic levels obscures the fact that the very organization and structuring of discourse can function as a strategy to give face. In this respect well and bueno merge both functions in the same way that they combine uses as largely empty discourse markers with those as fully lexical adjuncts.