Introduction

Spanish ranks among the world’s most widely used languages, a status that has intensified scholarly interest in how speakers tailor pragmatic choices to varied communicative settings. Genre, conceptualised as a recurrent, goal-directed communicative event (Swales, 1990), provides the organisational framework within which pragmatic resources—discourse markers, stance expressions, politeness strategies—are selected and interpreted. In Spanish, these resources display striking sensitivity to genre boundaries: informal dialogue teems with particles such as pues and bueno, whereas academic prose prefers organisational connectors like en primer lugar and sin embargo (Briz & Grupo Val.Es.Co, 2016).

Foundational works in Spanish pragmatics emphasise that meaning emerges from the interplay between linguistic form and socio-cognitive context (Escandell-Vidal, 2023). Yet cross-dialectal variation complicates the picture: research shows that Latin-American varieties typically employ more deferential mitigation than Peninsular Spanish in professional genres, reflecting differing cultural expectations of cortesía (Hernández Flores, 2020).

For Uzbek learners, whose communicative norms derive from Uzbek and Russian, these genre-sensitised pragmatic cues are far from transparent. Classroom studies in Tashkent document a persistent overuse of direct imperatives in formal e-mails and a restricted inventory of discourse markers, leading to unintended bluntness (Karimova, 2023; Abduhakimova, 2023). Addressing such gaps requires an integrated approach that links genre analysis with linguapragmatic training—an approach still under-represented in Central Asian Spanish curricula.

Accordingly, this article investigates the linguapragmatic correlates of genre in contemporary Spanish, contrasting native and learner corpora to:

1. map genre-bound distributions of discourse markers and politeness strategies;
2. identify region-specific pragmatic norms; and
3. propose pedagogical interventions suited to Uzbek higher education.

The study combines qualitative micro-analysis with quantitative corpus metrics, offering a fresh, data-driven perspective on the intersection of genre and pragmatics in Spanish.

Literature Review

Genre-oriented studies in Spanish pragmatics converge on the claim that pragmatic choices are genre-sensitive and socioculturally grounded. Pioneering corpus work by the Grupo Val.Es.Co documents how particles such as pues, bueno, and o sea structure turn-taking in conversation, while connectors like en primer lugar signal rhetorical staging in academic prose. Complementing these findings, The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Pragmatics synthesises research showing that discourse-marker density, stance verbs, and hedging devices fluctuate systematically with genre and register.

On the theoretical side, Escandell-Vidal’s updated Introducción a la pragmática frames genre as a “contextual key” that licenses otherwise indeterminate meanings, emphasising cognitive processing costs when markers are omitted or misused. Regional variation further complicates the terrain: Hernández-Flores shows that Latin-American business e-mails favour deference through conditional verbs (le agradecería…), whereas Peninsular writers accept higher directness thresholds.

Central-Asian scholarship highlights learner challenges. Karimova (2023) reports that Uzbek undergraduates over-rely on imperatives in Spanish institutional e-mails, producing pragmatic “roughness” that native speakers rate as impolite. Abduhakimova (2023) argues for genre-based pragmatics instruction after showing Uzbek learners’ limited mastery of discourse particles in oral role-plays. Both works call for an integrated pedagogy that couples genre analysis with explicit pragmalinguistic training.

From a wider applied-linguistics angle, Bhatia’s Critical Genre Analysis provides the methodological blueprint adopted here, advocating a multidimensional lens that relates textual realisation to professional practice. This framework legitimises combining quantitative corpus profiling with close qualitative reading to capture how genres “pull” particular pragmatic routines into play.

Methodology

A mixed corpus-analytic design was implemented:

• Native-speaker (L1) corpus – 250 000 words
• 100 000 words: academic lectures (Corpus del Español SIGLO XXI)
• 80 000 words: business e-mails (Spanish Interlanguage Email Corpus)
• 70 000 words: informal dialogues (Corpus Oral y Sonoro del Español Transatlántico)
• Learner (L2) corpus – 80 000 words
• Written assignments and transcribed role-plays by 84 Uzbek majors in Spanish (Uzbekistan State World Languages University, 2023 – 2024)

All files were POS-tagged and manually annotated for (a) discourse markers, (b) speech-act type, (c) politeness strategy, (d) genre, and (e) dialect. Two trained raters achieved Cohen’s κ = 0.84. Quantitative differences were tested with χ² (α = .05). Qualitative micro-analysis then traced how specific markers (e.g., mira, por tanto) realised interactional goals across genres.

The study follows Bhatia’s critical genre-analytic cycle—contextual grounding, textual profiling, and explanatory triangulation—to link corpus counts with communicative purposes and intercultural expectations.

Results

3.1 Distribution of Discourse Markers across Genres

Quantitative profiling of the 250 000-word L1 corpus confirmed that discourse-marker density is genre-sensitive (χ² = 74.6, p < .01). Informal dialogue showed the highest concentration—46 tokens per 1 000 words, dominated by pues, bueno, mira and o sea. Academic lectures averaged 15 tokens, favouring organisational connectors (en primer lugar, además, en conclusión). Business e-mails occupied an intermediate position (22 tokens), with strategic markers (por tanto, no obstante) used to signal logical progression and mitigate disagreement, in line with Briz & Grupo Val.Es.Co’s findings (2021).

3.2 Politeness Strategies and Regional Variation

Comparing Peninsular and Latin-American subsets of the business-e-mail corpus revealed pronounced regional asymmetry. While 62 % of requests in Peninsular data were framed with direct interrogatives (¿Puede enviarme …?), Latin-American writers employed conditional or periphrastic mitigators in 79 % of comparable moves (Le agradecería que pudiera …), corroborating Hernández Flores’s (2020) observation that Latin-American Spanish exhibits heightened deference norms.

3.3 Learner Deviations in the Uzbek L2 Corpus

The 80 000-word L2 corpus displayed three recurrent pragmalinguistic gaps:

1. Directive bluntness – 54 % of learner business e-mails used bare imperatives (Envíeme el informe) where natives preferred indirect strategies.
2. Under-hedging in academic texts – hedging devices (podría, parece) occurred at 1.8 tokens/1 000 words versus 6.2 in the native academic sub-corpus.
3. Restricted marker repertoire – learners used only nine different discourse particles in oral role-plays, against 23 in the native dialogue data (Karimova, 2023; Abduhakimova, 2023).
   
   

3.4 Summary Statistics

Tokens per 1 000 words.

3.5 Qualitative Insights

Close reading showed that Uzbek learners often substituted Russian-style particles (так, значит) for Spanish equivalents and omitted closing politeness formulae, which native raters construed as abrupt. Conversely, some learners attempted “hyper-politeness” by piling up honorifics, inadvertently sounding sarcastic—a pattern also reported in The Lingua Spectrum by Kadirova & Hernández (2022). These findings highlight the dual challenge of range (insufficient marker inventory) and rule (misalignment with genre-specific politeness norms).

Discussion

The findings substantiate the hypothesis that genre exerts a decisive influence on pragmalinguistic behaviour in Spanish, shaping both the inventory and frequency of discourse markers and the preferred politeness strategies. The sharp gradient from informal (46 markers/1 000 words) to academic discourse (15/1 000) echoes earlier corpus studies by Briz and Grupo Val.Es.Co (2021), reinforcing the view that markers such as pues and bueno function as solidarity devices best suited to low-stakes, interaction-focused genres. Their conspicuous down-scaling in lectures suggests that academic monologues prioritise informational clarity over interpersonal negotiation (Fuentes Rodríguez, 2019).

Regional contrasts further complicate the genre map. The predominance of conditional politeness in Latin-American business e-mails corroborates Hernández Flores’s (2020) observation that deference is a culturally valued norm south of the Atlantic, whereas Peninsular Spanish tolerates greater directness, especially among interlocutors of equal status. For foreign learners, exposure to just one dialect may therefore yield incomplete pragmatic models—a risk borne out by the Uzbek corpus, where learners routinely imported Peninsular-style direct interrogatives into contexts that native Latin-American professionals would consider brusque.

The L2 deviations identified—directive bluntness, under-hedging and a restricted marker set—converge with Central-Asian classroom research. Karimova (2023) attributes students’ over-use of imperatives to negative transfer from Uzbek and Russian, whose address systems permit comparatively direct directives in formal writing. Abduhakimova (2023) traces the barren marker repertoire to textbook input skewed toward “standard” Spanish, with scant exemplification of interactive particles. Our data add a new dimension: even when learners recognise genre labels (e.g., “business e-mail”), they may still under-attend to genre-specific politeness scripts, suggesting that metapragmatic awareness lags behind metagenre awareness.

Pedagogically, a genre-based pragmatics curriculum appears essential. Drawing on Bhatia’s (2017) critical genre cycle, teachers can (a) present authentic genre models, (b) guide learners in extracting pragmatic patterns and (c) supply contrastive analyses of Peninsular vs. Latin-American norms. Corpus-driven tasks—such as editing direct imperatives into mitigated requests—could help bridge the observed gaps. Additionally, integrating learner-corpus feedback, as advocated by Taguchi (2009), would allow students to monitor their own pragmatic development over time.

Finally, the study reinforces the “interface” view of pragmatic competence: grammatical knowledge is necessary but insufficient unless linked to sociocultural and genre knowledge (Escandell-Vidal, 2023). Future research should extend the corpus longitudinally to track how targeted instruction reshapes learners’ pragmatic choices across proficiency levels.

Conclusion

This investigation confirms that genre acts as a powerful filter through which Spanish speakers—native and non-native alike—select pragmatic resources. Discourse-marker density, hedging, and the degree of indirectness vary predictably along genre lines, while regional preferences (Peninsular vs. Latin-American) modulate politeness scripts in business communication. Uzbek learners demonstrate solid grammatical control but display systematic pragmalinguistic gaps: directive bluntness, sparse hedging, and a limited marker inventory. These shortcomings stem from negative first-language transfer, textbook bias toward a single dialect, and insufficient exposure to authentic genre models.

Pedagogical remedies should therefore combine (a) corpus-based genre exemplars, (b) explicit instruction in dialectal variation, and (c) metapragmatic reflection tasks that prompt learners to compare their output with native norms. Such an integrated curriculum will foster not only grammatical accuracy but also genre-appropriate, culturally attuned communication—an indispensable competence for users of Spanish in global professional arenas.

Future research should adopt longitudinal designs to trace how targeted genre-pragmatics instruction reshapes learner performance across proficiency levels and to explore additional genres (e.g., social-media discourse, legal drafting) that demand distinct pragmalinguistic repertoires.