ABSTRACT
The communicative potential of the subjunctive and the indicative lies in the general grammatical meaning of moods, which are used to mark propositions as absolute or relative statements. In other words, the subjunctive is a signal for the reader or listener to not interpret an utterance literally but to look for clues in the surrounding and situational context in order to figure out what the speaker really wants to say. The economy of language reserves the subjunctive for those situations that require additional steps to interpret the message and have a variety of communicative functions. It allows to contradict someone without being impolite, to express doubt, polite rebuttal, negation, critique and disapproval even if people do not know exactly or do not want to say why they are against it. The subjunctive creates a fictitious, alternative world and signals that the dependent predicate must be interpreted according to the context and not taken as a literal statement.
