Oh wait: English pragmatic markers in Spanish football chatspeak

Abstract

This article accounts for a case of pragmatic borrowing in a weak or casual language contact situation where English is a foreign language for the recipient language community, Spanish. The study describes and analyzes representative and specific examples of one English pragmatic discourse phraseological marker, namely, oh wait, in a sample of spontaneous synchronic comments made by football followers in Spanish football chats. The main purpose is to gain new insights into the use and distribution of oh wait in Spanish by focusing on its spelling variations, distribution, semantic and mainly pragmatic meanings and functions. The analysis shows that chat participants consciously resort to this foreign pragmatic marker as an ironic device with multiple simultaneous functions which affect the four levels of chat conversations, namely, the interaction or conversation itself, the previous statement or utterance, the other participants or interlocutors, and the user, participant or writer him/herself.