Ellipsis in communicative interactions and sociolinguistic variation

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify and classify occurrences of ellipsis in question-answer and other rejoinder sequences in the interview, to establish its contribution to oral textual coherence. Sociolinguistic variations derived from strata, age and sex of participants are also described. The corpus was taken from eighteen interviews to Valdivian speakers, men and women, divided into three social strata and three age groups. The results show the significant presence of ellipsis in communicative interactions, its contribution to topic progression and to the coherence of the oral texts analyzed. The sociolinguistic variation shows to be derived from the speakers' decisions with respect to what they say, and their attitudes towards the interviewer's observations (questions and other utterances). The interviewees' attitude showed significant differences among strata, between men and women, and between the youngest generation and the two older ones.