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Politeness and discourse markers: a case study of Spanish mira (look) and a ver (let´s see) The present study focuses on the politeness side effects (and pragmatic functions) of the discourse markers mira ‘look’ and a ver ‘let’s see’ in contexts characterized by a high degree of argumentation, where language is used as a vehicle to pursue certain communicative goals. Since ver ‘to see’ and mirar ‘to look’ have been shown to conceptualize the scene of vision from different perspectives (objective vs. subjective point of view) ―each giving rise to different paths of grammaticalization and semantic extensions (Hanegreefs 2008, González Melón & Hanegreefs 2010)―, we would like to examine whether and to what extent their conceptual differences are still manifest at a highly grammaticalized discourse level. In addition, the obvious morphological difference between both forms (mira-IMPERATIVE vs. (vamos) a ver-1PL+INF) made us wonder whether dissimilarities in pragmatic functioning would concomitantly result in divergent politeness effects, in terms of more or less face threatening (Brown & Levinson 1987). Our aim is to study the politeness strategies entailed in the use of mirar and a ver taking into consideration aspects such as: a) discourse context, b) person reference (T/V-distribution), c) terms of address, d) request strategies etc. To that end, we observe mira and a ver in a twofold spoken corpus, consisting of tertulia (informal gatherings) and debates. This choice is justified by the fact that in these kind of argumentative exchanges speakers tend to portray their opinions and ideas in a more or less face threatening way with the purpose of imposing their view on a specific subject. Whereas mira conceptualizes the speaker-hearer relationship from a divergent starting point, a ver tends to focus more easily on the possibility of a convergent end point in the discussion. A thorough corpus analysis gives answer to how these conceptual differences can be related to different communicative contexts and how they can be connected to the politeness theory formulated by Brown & Levinson (1987). References: BROWN, P. & S.C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CUENCA, M. J. & M. J. Marín. 2000. 'Verbos de percepción gramaticalizados como conectores, análisis contrastivo espańol-catalán'. In: Maldonado, R. (ed.). Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada, pp. 215-237. Logroño: Mogar Linotype. GONZ�?LEZ MELÓN, E. & H. Hanegreefs (2010). Usos discursivos de los verbos de percepción visual ver y mirar. Paper presented at the XXXIX Simposio Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística, Santiago de Compostela, 1-4/2/2010. HANEGREEFS, H. 2008. Los verbos de percepción visual. Un análisis de corpus en un marco cognitivo. Doctoral dissertation, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. HOPPER, P. & E. C. Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LAMIROY, B. & P. Swiggers. 1992. 'Patterns of Mobilization: A Study of Interaction Signals in Romance'. In: Geiger, R. & B. Rudska-Ostyn. Conceptualizations and Mental Processing in Language, pp. 649-678. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. MART�?N ZORRAQUINO, M. A. & J. Portolés Lázaro. 1999. 'Los marcadores del discurso'. In: Bosque, I. & V. Demonte (eds.). Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, Vol. 3, Ch. 63, pp. 4051-4213. Madrid: Espasa. PONS BORDER�?A, S. 1998. “Los apelativos oye y mira o los límites de la conexión. In: Martín Zorraquino, M. A. & E. Montolío (eds). Marcadores discursivos: teoría y práctica, pp. 213-228. Madrid: Arco.