Abstract:

Conversation formulae can be defined as a special language means used in everyday situations of high frequency and aimed at providing smooth communication between the participants of a speech act. We consider such formulae as minimal independent communication units which contain intonational, semantic and syntactic meaning.

Being universal in meaning, conversation clichés have culturally-bound features in different regional variations of the same language as well as in different languages. Thus, in the framework of learning and teaching Spanish as a multinational language, the acquisition of such differences might be useful to prevent misunderstanding in communication.

According to their communicative function, Spanish conversation formulae can be divided into logical, emotive and discourse ones. The latter serve the purpose to start, maintain and structure a conversation, hence their crucial part in the effective cooperation of interlocutors and the necessity to be introduced in classes of Spanish in all their possible variations.

Greeting each other (and asking about how the things are going) is the most frequent everyday situation and one of the basic points of efficient communication. Here, Latin American (LA) cultural meanings and connotations should be taught to avoid communication gaps at the beginner’s level. For example, the neutral ¿Qué tal?/¿Cómo estás? (“How are you?”) in Latin America may sound as follows: ¿Qué hay? fluently pronounced ¿Quihay? (and its variations – ¿Quihabido?/¿Quihubo?) in Colombia (lit. “What have you got?”); ¿Qué es de tu vida? in Venezuela (lit. “What is of your life?”); ¿Qué se cuenta? (lit. “What is being said?”) or ¿Qué vuelta? (lit. “What twist?”) in Cuba; ¿Qué onda? (Mexico, Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Uruguay), literally – “What radiowave?”, etc.

The type of greeting also depends on extralinguistic factors: the interlocutors’ relationship, their age or residence. In Cuba an informal conversation begins with the question ¿Qué volá/volón, asere? (lit. “What’s flying, dude?”), aimed at demonstrating friendliness. Friends here also greet each other with Hola, mi negro/chino (irrespective of the interlocutors’ nationality); the first address is characteristic of Argentina as well, among close friends or within couples aged 40+. In Colombia, one can hear ¡Buenas y santas! (lit. “Good and saint” ≈ “Good morning/afternoon/evening”) among aged people, or a dialogue like: – ¡Avemaría purísima! (lit. “Saint Virgin Mary” ≈ “Hello, how are you?”) – ¡Sin pecao concebida! (lit. “Of Inmaculate Conception” ≈ “Hello, very well, thank you”) in the countryside.

This does not presuppose the absence of standard greetings (¡Buenos días/buenas tardes/noches! or ¿Qué tal?) in LA countries, but the aforementioned discourse formulae, on the one hand, are frequent there and puzzle those who study Pyrenean Spanish. On the other hand, such clichés, being indispensable of LA communication, are not introduced systematically in Spanish textbooks. In this regard, we suggest that LA discourse formulae should be taught by modeling relevant communicative situations in order to prevent and overcome possible communication difficulties. We offer a set of exercises based on authentic texts and video fragments which illustrate the adequate usage of conversational clichés in different regional variations of Spanish.

Keywords:

Latin American Spanish, conversation cliché, discourse formulae, communication difficulties, greeting.