Analysis of the functional and positional flexibility of the Spanish discursive marker o sea (que) in a life story

Abstract

This article analyzes in detail the various uses that the Spanish discursive marker o sea (que) adopts in an oral text of the genre ‘life story’ produced in Buenos Aires city in 2013. The aim is to classify and clarify these uses based on two criteria: their semantic-pragmatic function and their position in the utterance. The analysis combines six main functions (explanation, conclusion, restriction, continuation, reinforcement and attenuating at closure) and three positions (initial, middle and final). The chief findings of this work are not only the high frequency of this marker in oral expression, but also the ample diversity and flexibility —concerning position as well as function— it can adopt throughout the same text. This versatility is partly attributed to the persistence of the ‘original’ disjunctive sense of o after a process of grammaticalization.