Discourse traditionality and formulaic speech at the (beginning of) dialogical turn in the history of Spanish

Abstract

This paper addresses some turn-initial or turn-exclusive formulas in the history of Spanish literature. The continuity of formulas from Latin to Romance and its diachronic variation in terms of discourse preferences (for example, regarding topic and focus function) and systematic preferences (substitution of grammatical schemes throughout history, syntactic preferences, lexical obsolescence, etc.) are discussed. The analysis helps to understand the relevance of various literary traditions for the habitualisation of formulas, without forgetting that dialogue, considered as a (macro)genre, is transversal to different sub-genres. On the other hand, the relevance of the 19th century as a key period in the development of ‘elaborated orality’ thanks to the proliferation of comedy, including the translations of Latin comediographers, is highlighted. The conclusions point out that dialogic formulas are the manifestation of a supra-idiomatic tradition which, in many cases, has been invisible to linguistic research.