Regional pragmatic variation in the use of the discourse marker pues in informal talk among university students in Quito (Ecuador), Santiago (Chile) and Seville (Spain)

• Reduced forms of pues, albeit not necessarily the same, are used across varieties.
• The function of discourse markers needs to be examined with respect to their position.
• Two overall functions of pues were identified: pues as a connector and as an operator.
• There is regional variation in the use of pues as an operator and a connector.
• Some situational variation in the use of pues was found alongside regional variation.

The discourse marker pues in spoken Spanish has been studied extensively in Peninsular Spanish (see, among many others, Fuentes-Rodríguez, 1987, Fuentes-Rodríguez, 2009, Garcés Gómez, 1992 and Portolés Lázaro, 1989). There is also a growing body of studies on pues in Latin American varieties of Spanish (cf. Travis, 2005, Vázquez Carranza, 2013 and Zavala, 2001). Less attention, however, has been paid to this discourse marker in Chilean and Ecuadorian Spanish. Also, very little attention has been given to the study of discourse markers in Spanish from an inter-varietal standpoint. Taking a variational pragmatics perspective (Schneider and Barron, 2008), in this paper we examine the impact of region (cf. Placencia, 2011) on the use of pues in informal talk among university students in Quito (Ecuador), Santiago (Chile) and Seville (Spain). Our analysis is based on a corpus of 60 role-play interactions within each location, eliciting advice-giving and complaint talk in −SD (social distance) −P (power) scenarios.We look at variation in the distribution of pues in relation to form, position and functions. For example, pues and its variants, which are not all shared across varieties, were found to occur in turn/act initial position only in Seville, and in act final position only in Quito and Santiago. Linked to position, two types of pues in use, each with their own functions, emerged: pues as a connector and pues as an operator. Thus our study shows that there is formal and functional variation in the use of pues across data sets, the latter linked to position.