| The present investigation is a mixed method study combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to explore the use of "como" as a discourse marker in the Spanish spoken in Southern Arizona, based on a corpus of twenty-four sociolinguistic interviews of young male and female Spanish-English bilinguals. In a data set of 1148 occurrences of "como," 21.3% fulfill a focus discourse function, 2.2% fulfill a quotative discourse function, and 76.5% fulfill a lexical function. The analysis of young Spanish-English bilinguals using "como" in Spanish to fulfill discourse functions of "like" in English sheds light on how bilinguals structure discourse by drawing from both languages. The results of this study on the diffusion of the focus and quotative "como" to another Spanish-English bilingual community add to our knowledge of how discourse markers can travel both within and between communities and across languages. |
