Abstract

GONZALEZ RIFFO, Javier Andrés. Mitigating diminutives in narratives of personal experiences from people in the city of Santiago de Chile: Is it a variable phenomenon?. Cuad. Lingüíst. Col. Méx. [online]. 2019, vol.6, n.1, e124.  Epub Feb 18, 2020. ISSN 2007-736X.  https://doi.org/10.24201/clecm.v6i1.124.

This study, which takes into account the mitigating side of diminutives, analyzes if there is a sociolinguistic variation in the Santiago de Chile variety regarding the use of mitigating diminutives in relation to factors such as sex, socioeconomic segment and type of narrative construction. In order to achieve this, the conceptual and methodological frameworks of variationist and interactional sociolinguistics were used. The analysis was carried out based on 90 narratives of personal experiences: 36 individual and 54 conversational. The study shows that diminutives are mainly used in male individual narratives, and in male-to-male conversational narratives belonging to a low socioeconomic segment. The lack of statistically-significant results may lead to reevaluate the idea that it is a widespread phenomenon throughout the speech community being studied.

Keywords : variationist sociolinguistics; narratives; diminutives; modality; mitigation.

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