«Sólo un poquito». Use and function of diminutives in two peninsular Spanish Facebook groups

Abstract

There is a wide range of studies centred on the analysis and description of the diminutive in Spanish, both in its different linguistic varieties and in contrast with other languages. More recently, however, the focus has shifted from oral discourse to digital discourse, since the latter is increasingly becoming an everyday means of communication and interests scholars for its hybrid nature, being a mixture of oral and written language. In this vein, the present article aims to analyse the use of the diminutive as a mitigating strategy in digital discourse. More specifically, the focus is on contrasting its use by two Facebook groups: a fan page whose members exclusively hold an online relationship based on their common interest in a Spanish singer and a personal page whose members hold a hybrid relationship (both online and offline). Results show that the use of diminutives is higher in the hybrid corpus, where they are also more versatile and can express affect, closeness, size, reproach and mitigation. In contrast, diminutives are markedly scarcer in the online corpus, where their function is practically reduced to mitigation.