RT Journal Article
T1 ¿Hola? Counter-expectation and stance in non-canonical uses of a greeting form in Spanish
A1 Martínez Vázquez, Montserrat
K1 Discourse markers
K1 Stance
K1 Counter-expectation
K1 Reaction constructions
K1 Interactive grammar
K1 Non-canonical interrogatives
K1 Spanish
AB This article examines the discourse-pragmatic uses of interrogative ¿hola? in contemporary written European Spanish. While hola is conventionally described as a greeting, its interrogative use has received little attention and remains largely undocumented. Drawing on 364 tokens from large web-based corpora, the study shows that ¿hola? is predominantly used as an addressee-oriented, reactive device that targets prior discourse and encodes evaluation.The analysis identifies a clear functional pattern: rather than initiating interaction or expressing surprise alone, ¿hola? typically presents a preceding contribution as unexpected, inappropriate, or norm-violating, thereby projecting a stance-bearing response. These uses are strongly associated with turn-medial position, where the form is typically used in pivot-like configurations linking prior discourse to a subsequent evaluative or argumentative move.The findings show that the interpretation of ¿hola? depends crucially on its sequential placement and its relation to prior discourse. In this respect, it works as a resource for managing interaction and negotiating shared expectations, instead of as a carrier of propositional meaning.The study argues that these uses are best understood within the domain of interactive grammar, as a redeployment of a greeting formula into an interrogative, reactive device for managing interaction and expressing stance. More broadly, the results illustrate how a conventional greeting form can function as a compact resource for encoding counter-expectational evaluation in context.
PB Elsevier
YR 2026
FD 2026-07-11
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10433/27209
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10433/27209
LA en
NO Montserrat Martínez Vázquez, ¿Hola? Counter-expectation and stance in non-canonical uses of a greeting form in Spanish, Journal of Pragmatics, Volume 262, 2026, Pages 140-150, ISSN 0378-2166, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2026.06.009.
NO Universidad Pablo de Olavide. Departamento de Filología y Traducción
DS RIO
RD Jul 16, 2026