DISROM 8: Silvia Murillo analyses counterargumentative discourse markers in English and Spanish
Silvia Murillo Ornat participated in the international conference Discourse Markers in Romance Languages (DISROM), which was celebrated at the University of Lisbon (Portugal) from the 19th to the 21st of June 2024. This conference seeks to build upon earlier gatherings, providing a forum where both prominent linguists and emerging researchers can share insights, exchange ideas, and expand their research horizons.
Our colleague Silvia Murillo was a chair in this event and she also presented a paper, titled “A contrastive study of discourse markers with the word contrario/contrary in Spanish and English academic language”. In her paper, Silvia focused on counterargumentative discourse markers that include the word “contrary”/“contrario”, by presenting the contrastive analysis results of a variety of contemporary academic books in English and Spanish found in two different corpora: the British National Corpus and Corpes XXI.
You can read the abstract of her talk below:
A contrastive study of discourse markers with the word contrario/contrary in Spanish and English academic language
The counterargumentative discourse markers that include the word contrary/contrario, (mainly por el contrario and al contrario in Spanish and on the contrary in English) are often used in academic texts in order to introduce counterarguments and articulate different points of view. Taking as a basis the instructional approach developed by Portolés (20012) for the study of the procedural meaning of discourse markers in Spanish, these markers encode argumentative, informative and polyphonic instructions, but some differences can be found between them (Portolés, 1994, 1998a, 1998b, 2004; Santos, 2003, for the Spanish markers; Murillo, 2023, for a contrastive overview). Studies of similar markers in other Romance languages are Macário and Lopes (2014) for Portuguese and Sainz (2014) for Italian.
The aim of this paper is to present the results of a qualitative and quantitative Spanish-English contrastive study of these counterargumentative markers. For this purpose, a comparable corpus of contemporary academic books in English and in Spanish will be analysed. The corpus consists of the cases found in the British National Corpus (BNC 2014, cases from the period 2010-2020) and in Corpes XXI (cases from 2006-2020), each subcorpora comprising around four million words. A corpus of academic language is suitable to explore these discourse markers, particularly the different polyphonic configurations in which they appear and their frequency.
The analysis will focus on several variables derived from the instructional framework followed: for the argumentative instructions, the variables of contrast and refutation will be considered, for the informative instructions, topic change and topic repetition, and for the polyphonic instructions, instances displaying two locutors and two enunciators, and those with one locutor and two enunciators. In addition, the study will include some other variables such as the position they occupy in the discourse member in which they appear, and their use as independent discourse members. The data analysis program Nvivo will be used to carry out the research, and statistical tests will be performed to assess the significance of the results. This study will be particularly relevant for (academic) language users and for translators.
References
Macário Lopes, A. C., & Sousa, S. (2014). The discourse connectives ao invés and pelo contrario in contemporary European Portuguese. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 13(1), 3-27.
Murillo Ornat, S. (2023). An instructional account for on the contrary based on Portolés’s studies on counterargumentative connectors. Biblioteca de Babel: Revista de Filología Hispánica, vol. extra. 1, 117-136.
Portolés Lázaro, J. (1994). Sobre los conectores discursivos con la palabra contrario. In C. Martín Vide (Coord.), Lenguajes naturales y lenguajes formales: actas del X congreso de lenguajes naturales y lenguajes formales (pp. 527-534). Barcelona: PPU.
Portolés Lázaro, J. (1998a). La Teoría de la Argumentación en la lengua y los marcadores del discurso. In M. A. Martín Zorraquino, & E. Montolío (Coords.), Los marcadores del discurso: teoría y análisis (pp. 243-264). Madrid: Arco/Libros.
Portolés Lázaro, J. (1998b). Dos pares de marcadores del discurso: en cambio y por el contrario, en cualquier caso y en todo caso. In M. A. Martín Zorraquino, & Estrella Montolío Durán (Coords.), Los marcadores del discurso: teoría y análisis (pp. 243- 264). Madrid: Arco/ Libros.
Portolés Lázaro, J. (2001 [1998]). Marcadores del discurso. 2nd ed. Barcelona: Ariel.
Portolés Lázaro, J. (2004). Sobre el uso de al contrario en las traducciones. In M. Jesús García Domínguez, G. Piñero Piñero, M. Díaz Peralta, & V. Marrero Pulido (Eds.), Lengua española y traducción (pp. 19-37). Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Servicio de Publicaciones.
Sainz González, E. (2014). El reformulador italiano anzi y sus formas equivalentes en español. In E. Sainz González (Ed.), De la estructura de la frase al tejido del discurso. Estudios contrastivos español/italiano (pp. 143-177). Bern: Peter-Lang.
Santos Río, L. (2003). Diccionario de partículas. Salamanca: Luso-Española de Ediciones.