The present relevance in pandemic times: a study on verbal constructions in journalistic writing

Abstract

The news is a convenient environment for the study of the expression of anteriority, especially when taking into consideration the domain of present relevance (PR). This study aims to investigate different variant forms functioning as indicators to situations that denote the ongoing result of a past situation, a subdomain that is contained by the PR domain. Our interest stems from the appreciation of different ways in which Hispanic newspapers report facts related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which can even catch the eye of speakers who are not language experts. In order to analyze this variation phenomenon, discussed here in light of the Linguistic Functionalism or Use-centered Linguistics (GIVÓN, 1995; 2001a; 2001b; 2002; HOPPER, 1991; 1998; BYBEE, 2006; 2016) and, for that reason, evoked from the notions of functional domain and layering principle (HOPPER, 1991; GIVÓN, 2002; GÖRSKI; TAVARES, 2017), we scrutinized our object based on a compilation of five internationally significant facts that were published simultaneously in online newspapers from four Hispanic countries (Argentina, Colombia, Spain and Peru) under the methodological steps of Oliveira (2007; 2010). The results observed at this stage of the research suggest: (i) the complexity of isolating the functional subdomain; (ii) the identification of different layers within the isolated subdomain, such as present forms and the past forms pretérito perfecto simple, pretérito perfecto compuesto in addition to circumlocutory phrases; and (iii) a more frequent use of the pretérito perfecto compuesto tense in the samples of Spain and Peru, in which this verbal form seems to advance in the grammaticalization process, according to Oliveira (2010).