Managing subjectivity: Omission and expression of first-person singular object a mí in Spanish media discourse

Abstract

In considering the cognitive notion of informativeness, variants of the Spanish first-person singular objecta mí‘to me’, ‘myself’ convey different meanings. These meanings are used to pursue communicative goals in discursive interactions. A qualitative examination of specific examples of first-person singular objecta mívariants (omitted, preverbal, and postverbal) as well as a quantitative analysis of these variants across different socio-professional affiliations of speakers was conducted to ascertain how these variants contribute to the construction of communicative styles based on the cognitive dimension of subjectivity. This article demonstrates that these forms and their meanings are unevenly distributed across the socio-professional affiliations of speakers; thus, it may be concluded that variation of first-person singular objecta míshape different communicative styles.

Desubjectivizing discourse through the use of the periphrasis haber que + infinitive in Spanish

“…Salience has proved to be a very useful notion for establishing the meanings generated by syntactic variants, and it has made it possible to adequately analyze variation in Spanish subject and object pronouns (e.g. Aijón Oliva, 2018, 2019Aijón Oliva & Serrano, 2013;Serrano ,2018a;Serrano, 2018b).…”

Desubjetivación del discurso escrito y gestión de referentes en las formas de la primera persona del plural en español

“…La finalidad de este trabajo es presentar nuevos resultados que complementen los que previamente se han llevado a cabo sobre las formas de la primera persona del plural en el marco de los estudios de variación morfosintáctica (cfr. Aijón Oliva 2019, Aijón Oliva & Serrano 2010, Serrano 2018, pero con la consideración del tipo de verbo como factor covariante. La elección de las variantes expresa (nosotros/-as) u omitida (ø) de primera persona del plural en función de sujeto no es arbitraria, sino que se trata de un recurso de estilo.…”