Suspended Constructions in Oral Discourse's Structure

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach to the discursive analysis of the so-called suspended structures, which are typical from oral Spanish and maximum communicative immediacy. This research not only seeks to examine their functioning as independent utterances in certain communicative contexts, but also the way these constructions are embedded in the text’s general structure and in superior units, such as paragraphs and interventions. To achieve this, the positions of these structures are analysed (initial, intermediate, final, and independent) in relation to different textual genres defined by their communicative distance. Thus, defining functions related to the formation of superior units and textual progression is possible. Finally, this paper explains the suspended structures’ influence to characterise the genre. Their use affects the position of the text in the immediacy-distance scale: suspended constructions are a typical phenomenon from the orality and characterise the Spanish texts where they appear with some oral features.