During a typical conversation in the English language, people tend to use words like “well” and “so” as fillers or discourse markers; words that help the conversation flow but may not appear to serve much of a purpose. Or do these words contribute more to a conversation than simply a word spoken out of habit or to fill the silence? Aquinas junior, Elizabeth Nelson and her faculty mentor Dr. Carmen Ruiz-Sánchez, Assistant Professor of Spanish, are carrying this question over to the Spanish language and focusing their research on the demonstrative pronoun “eso” or “that.”

During the spring 2013 semester, Nelson took Dr. Ruiz-Sánchez’s class, SH310: Mastering Spanish through Translation. One day, Nelson and Ruiz-Sánchez found themselves discussing new uses of the demonstrative pronoun “eso.” Being both an English and Spanish major, Nelson enjoys studying linguistics so naturally this topic interested her. To their knowledge, this topic has not been studied before so Ruiz-Sánchez and Nelson were eager to start their research.

“We're attempting to understand the use of the word "eso" (which usually means "that") in Spanish. "Eso" is often used in spoken communication as what some people think of as a useless "filler" word to close gaps in a conversation,” said Nelson. “However, we think it might serve a more important function than that. To discover whether or not this is true, we have to look at some individual occurrences of the word "eso" in context to determine whether it somehow aids the speaker in communicating a message to the listener.”

Ruiz-Sánchez conducted and transcribed 38 interviews with native Spanish speakers from Alcalá de Guadaíra, Spain. Each interview runs about 30 minutes long. The interviews are divided into two sexes, three age groups, and three educational levels to properly represent the population. Nelson and Ruiz-Sánchez will also read articles written about subjects similar to this in Spanish as well as other languages to guide them in their research and analyze their findings.

Nelson credits Aquinas in providing her with the tools necessary to guide her through the steps of conducting a research project such as this. “My English and Spanish courses at Aquinas have given me some great background knowledge that I've been able to carry over to my research,” said Nelson. “The research tools on the school's website have also been invaluable to me.”

Ruiz-Sánchez has helped Nelson immensely throughout this project, acting as her mentor. “I had already conducted the interviews and had collected the data, so I showed her how these sociolinguistic interviews were carried out,” said Ruiz-Sánchez. “I taught her how to transcribe the interviews and she helped me code all the cases of “eso.” We have also put together a reference list. We have been reading all the articles and discussing them. In addition, I answer questions she has and explains certain terms and concepts.”

So far, Nelson and Ruiz-Sánchez are done with the interview transcriptions and almost done with the literature review and data analysis, which they hope will be complete by the end of July. In August the duo plans to write a report on their findings.

Nelson will present this research during the spring 2014 semester.

Nelson is thankful to have a faculty mentor like Ruiz-Sanchez throughout this project. She acknowledges all of the hard work that Ruiz-Sánchez has put into helping Nelson learn how to conduct a sociolinguistic research project in general as well as the hard work it has taken to make this particular project a success. Nelson said, “[Ruiz-Sánchez] took on the daunting task of teaching me all about the use demonstrative pronouns (and other related topics) in Spanish, which, I must admit, is a more complicated subject than I once thought. I have the responsibility of making sure I understand what I read and applying that knowledge to the project, but she has provided me with all the materials that are helping me do my best on this project and has guided me through every step.”