Although standard exclamatives have been studied for the last thirty years, (as far as I know) rhetorical exclamatives have not been studied at all in any language, (as far as I know). The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the systematic internal characterization of rhetorical exclamatives in Spanish, from a syntactic, semantic and pragmatic point of view. I compare the sentence class of rhetorical exclamatives to (with) standard exclamatives and to (with) rhetorical questions. I focus on the most representative members of the rhetorical-exclamative class, namely those introduced by gradable adjectival or adverbial phrases. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]