La estrategia evidencial dizque en el español de Medellín, Colombia

Abstract

Several studies have been carried out on the so-called "dizque" unit in Latin-American Spanish, describing its evidential meaning. This article describes the use of "dizque" as an evidential strategy in Spanish spoken in Medellin, Colombia. Taking the PRESEEA-Medellín corpus as a reference, the meanings of this unit and its use with respect to the social variables defined in the corpus were analyzed. In this way, the polyfunctionality of dizque was established, and six functions in Medellin Spanish are proposed: epistemic modality, imprecise external source, direct discourse, indirect discourse, marking of nominal elements and the indication of mode of cognitive access to the information presented. Respect to social variables, it is proposed that women, upper class and higher education informants tend to use it less, which relates to the fact that this evidential strategy is thought to be more suited to the informal registry.