The elusive agent. A corpus-based study of Spanish passive and impersonal constructions.

Friday November 29, 2013 at 14:15 – 16:00 (HF: 217)

This project is a postdoctoral project for which I am currently applying for funding. It aims to reevaluate the passive/active status of the Spanish constructions “pasiva refleja” (PR), the periphrastic passive (PERP) and the “se impersonal” (IMP), using the LFG-framework and corpus linguistics, to ascertain the consequences of using linguistic constructions which conceal the agent when sensitive topics such as poverty are broached. No corpus-based study exists for all three structures and a suitable corpus will be collected by the NFR-funded POLAME project,(a comparative case study of how agenda-setting media in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico convey and construct the notions of poverty). LFG is a well-attested suitable tool for explicating impersonals and the passive/active distinction in any language, and the leaf nodes of its constituent structures are based only on what is directly observable in an utterance, so it is well suited for corpus-based studies. The evaluation of the three constructions as passive or not will involve an examination of the inclusion of certain semantic properties for the agent-role in the argument-structure of the LFG-representation. It will also involve a revision of LFG’s Subject Condition for Spanish. A hybrid structure between the PR and the IMP, which has not previously been properly accounted for, is expected to be found in the Argentinian corpus, and will also be scrutinized. Finally, a comparison (frequency, semantics) will be made of the three structures in corpora treating poverty with those in corpora treating non-sensitive subjects. My hypothesis is that the use of passive and impersonal constructions to speak about poverty has a tendency to “depersonalize” it and to make it easier to evade uncomfortable notions such as culpability and cause.

Margrete Dyvik Cardona, Lecturer, LLE, University of Bergen.