La variación diamésica como herramienta de análisis metaoperacional: el caso de aún y todavía

Abstract

According to most grammars and dictionaries of present-day Spanish, the operators aún and todavía are considered synonymous elements of expression of continuity or persistence of a previous element, known – totally or partially – by the enunciator and his interlocutors. However, analysing the two ope- rators from a meta-operational perspective, there are some differences in usage that allow us to highlight the nuances that distinguish them from each other in terms of the reference to this prior element and the attitude of the enunciator. This paper aims to propose the study of the variational context, and precisely that of diamesic variation, as a tool for this type of comparative analysis between similar operators. The analysis of communicative intentions in the so-called written oral (i.e.: scripts, screenplays, written dia- logues etc.) compared to “pure” writing and speaking, precisely because of the different consideration of the previous phase that each medium imposes, demonstrates the existence of different attitudes on the part of the enunciator when choosing one operator or the other. Variation is therefore presented not only as an object of study, but also as a central tool in linguistic analysis, without the study of which it would be difficult to highlight the metalinguistic characteristics of each of the operators in question, traditio- nally treated as “synonyms”.