¿Qué pasa? o ¿Qué está pasando?

This chaper analyses the different contact values and meaning effects that the utterer’s discursive strategies can generate by means of alternating grammatical operators as the simple present tense and the present form of the estar + gerundio structure in Spanish. The starting point will be the introduction of the way these forms should work according to the principles of metaoperational grammar (Adamczewski 1978, 1982, 1996). An account will follow of the different operations that could be made on the basis of these principles. The language samples used will consist in utterances inserted into their discursive context, which will be also as detailed as possible, in order to properly appreciate the role each form will play in the communicative exchange.