As a television genre, telenovelas have formed a crucial part of not only the Mexican but of the Latin-American culture in general ever since their beginnings on the radio in Cuba in the 1960s. They have become one of the main exports of said countries, but, at the same time,
they have become a reflection of the society itself, seeing many of the quotidian situations or stereotypes reflected in them. The Mexican telenovela Mi corazón es tuyo served as a starting point for this M.A. Thesis’ main topic, spoken discourse analysis, providing examples
observed in the speech of its main characters in different episodes. These examples were used to support what has been said in the theoretical part, dedicated mainly to the analysis of spoken discourse as a linguistic discipline, including its definition and its main characteristics, as well as discourse context, linguistic variation, paraverbal and non-verbal elements oflanguage. The second chapter is dedicated to telenovelas and the concept of orality in telenovelas, while the third chapter offers some general insights about the variety of Spanish spoken in Mexico, with particular emphasis on its phonetic-phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical properties.
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