CONSTRUCCIONES Y RELACIONES DISCURSIVAS: ESTUDIO Y DEFINICIÓN DE EL CASO ES QUE

The aim of this research is to define the expression “el caso es que”, a construction that has not received the attention it deserves and can only be explained by drawing on contributions from pragmatic linguistics, macrosyntax, and studies on discourse relations. After examining its definition in various dictionaries, its distributional and prosodic behaviour is analysed, along with its ability to combine with other linguistic elements, such as phatic and discourse markers. Finally, the corpus analysis clarifies its procedural functions, which influence the informational, argumentative, and modal levels, as it reveals the speaker’s intention to focus, specify and draw a conclusion.