| Resumo: | This study, which takes into account the mitigating side of diminutives,analyzes if there is a sociolinguistic variation in the Santiago de Chile varietyregarding the use of mitigating diminutives in relation to factors such as sex,socioeconomic segment and type of narrative construction. In order to achievethis, the conceptual and methodological frameworks of variationist and interactionalsociolinguistics were used. The analysis was carried out based on 90narratives of personal experiences: 36 individual and 54 conversational. Thestudy shows that diminutives are mainly used in male individual narratives, andin male-to-male conversational narratives belonging to a low socioeconomicsegment. The lack of statistically-significant results may lead to reevaluate the idea that it is a widespread phenomenon throughout the speech community being studied.
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