"Así" as a resource for cohesion in casual conversation

Abstract

This presentation is part of a research project about “Cohesion and coherence in casual conversation” that is being developed at the University of La Plata by the Group ECLAR (El Español de Chile y Argentina). The aim of this work is to analyze the meanings and functions of the expression “así” (like this) frequently used in informal talk, and to confirm or refute the hypothesis that it contributes to the cohesion of conversation in different ways. The corpus used is formed by 55 conversations between university students of 18 to 25 years of age, and who hold a close relationship among themselves in most cases. The principles of the Systemic Functional Linguistics were taken as a point of departure; descriptions of the meanings of the item in Spanish grammars and in writings about vague language also constituted basic bibliography. A local analysis of the occurrences of the term in context was carried out with the help of interpretation and comparison techniques. The results obtained showed that “asi” establishes internal references as much as external references in a text, in which case we would like to highlight the importance of the speaker`s assessment who, when choosing a form of expression, presupposes certain cognitive abilities of his interlocutor and a shared world with him.