La pasiva con "se" agentiva en los textos jurídico-administrativos: su incidencia pragmática

Abstract

The purpose of this article is the analysis of the function that the agentive passive with se has in Spanish legal texts, specially its textual and discursive significance. First of all, the author proves that this construction, considered ungrammatical in current works, is present in Castilian texts since the origins of the language, though never in a high frequency. Nowadays this form is characteristic of the legal language. After analysing the factors that can determinate its presence in juridical texts, the author concludes that the use of this form is recquired by all the traits of this kind of language. The reflexive passive, agentive or not, is typical of a formal and learned level; it permits word order change and points up an element offering it an objective use, if the topicalizated element is the direct object, or a subjective one, when the special word order emphasizes the speaker's point of view. The need for alluding the interlocutors of the communicative situation, for avoiding any kind of ambiguity and for showing all the possibles facts, makes the passive with se express the agent of the action, without diminishing its first significance: emphasize the process of the verb.