Related Papers
Sociolinguistic Competences in the Use of Colombian Pronouns of Address
2006 •
Patricia Bayona, PhD
Pronouns of Address in Informal Contexts: A Comparison of Two Dialects of Colombian Spanish by
2016 •
Monica Millan
The paradigm of forms of address in Modern Spanish is subject to dialectal variation. Many Latin American varieties of Spanish, i.e. Costa Rican, Argentinean, Chilean, among others, display a tripartite system of second person pronouns comprised of tú, usted and vos. The case of Colombian Spanish is particularly interesting because there is greater variation in the patterns of use of pronominal address. The use of more than one pronoun to address the same interlocutor in the same discourse is what I will call mixed-use. The purpose of this study is to examine the sociolinguistic variables that determine the use of vos, tú, usted, and the mixed-use in two varieties of Colombian Spanish (Medellin and Cali). Data for the analysis were collected by means of three instruments consisting of a sociodemographic and a written questionnaires and oral interviews. Participants in the study were 293 college students from private and state universities, who were born or lived most of their lives ...
Sociolinguistic Aspects of forms of address in Portugal and Brazil: Tu or Você
Ana C Thome Williams
Pronouns of Address in Informal Contexts: A Comparison of Two Dialects of Colombian Spanish
2011 •
Monica Millan
Address in Portuguese and Spanish
Forms of address from the Ibero-Romance perspective
Thiago Laurentino de Oliveira
Hispanic Studies Review
A New Look at Forms of Address in the Spanish of Cali, Colombia
The Spanish spoken in Cali, Colombia, is characterized by a tripartite system of address, with vos, tú and usted existing as options for speakers according to a variety of social and contextual variables. The present study, based on 801 surveys with native Caleños, finds a relatively stable system of address forms, but with preliminary evidence of a possible future change. Specifically, results show that, in comparison with verbal voseo, pronominal vos is disfavored by lower and middle social strata. Higher social groups, however, do not seem to stigmatize either form, suggesting that higher strata speakers are able to access the covert prestige benefits of the salient pronominal form in a way that lower class speakers are not. Additional findings, including the social factors influencing participants to report vos, tú or usted, are discussed.
Journal of Pragmatics
Forms of address in interaction: Evidence from Chilean Spanish
2020 •
Víctor Fernández-Mallat
This study reexamines the nature of forms of address in Chilean Spanish. Traditionally, survey-, ethnography- and interview-based methods have suggested that the address system of Chilean Spanish is rather static—in other words, that the choice between second person singular pronouns and their corresponding verbal inflections is uniquely determined by the relationship between speaker, interlocutor, and setting. Additionally, when variable usage has been documented, it has been observed in semi-staged and scripted settings, and interpreted as a random phenomenon in which shifts occur freely and unmarkedly. Using evidence from both unstaged everyday, ordinary talk settings and institutional contexts, this study demonstrates that address forms in Chilean Spanish are dynamic, and that speakers of this variety deploy them strategically to achieve their interactional goals. This locates my study within previous sociolinguistic research of the interactional strand, in which forms of address are interpreted as tools that speakers use to discursively construct relevant, time-specific aspects of their identities. Ultimately, it demonstrates that, far from being unequivocally constrained by socially conventionalized pragmatic norms, speakers are in control of their linguistic, discursive resources, and deploy different and varied address forms in ways that allow them to accomplish their immediate interactional goals.
Lopes, Célia; Marcotulio, Leonardo; Oliveira, Thiago. Forms of address from the Ibero-Romance perspective. In: Martin Hummel & Célia Regina dos Santos Lopes (eds.), Address in Portuguese and Spanish. Studies in diachrony and diachronic reconstruction, Berlin / Boston (Walter de Gruyter) 2020.
Forms of address from the Ibero-Romance perspective: A brief history of Brazilian voceamento
2020 •
Celia Regina dos Santos Lopes, Leonardo Marcotulio
The objective of this chapter is to map how the new (sub)systems of second person singular address in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) became organized, examining how address forms in subject position correlate with forms in the other positions (accusative, dative, oblique, genitive). We analyze samples of personal letters written by Brazilians in the 19th and 20th centuries from two regions of the country (Southeast and Northeast). In subject position, the results evidence a gradual loss in use of the pronoun tu 'you' to the benefit of the new form você 'you', starting in the first half of the 20th century. In the other morphosyntactic contexts, we found a very irregular distribution of the innovative form você.
Open Linguistics
Changes and continuities in second person address pronoun usage in Bogotá Spanish
2023 •
Víctor Fernández-Mallat, David Barrero
In this article, we provide further evidence that Bogotá Spanish is transitioning from being an extensively usted-using variety into one in which tú is preferred in informal interaction by analyzing survey data through a quantitative approach, and metalinguistic commentary through a qualitative approach. Our data show that tú is mainly thought of as a productive way to convey proximity. At the same time, our data show that, despite this change in second person preference, usted and sumercé persist in familiar address, albeit at rates considerably lower than tú. Usted is particularly frequent among males in same-gender dyads because it allows them to avoid the possible connotations of effeminacy that tú may have in that specific context. Sumercé is frequently selected in addressing older relatives and individuals from the countryside because it is seen as being capable of conveying respect and affection simultaneously. Moreover, sumercé is seen as a sign of local identity capable of distinguishing Bogotá Spanish from other national varieties with vos, which is marginal in our data. Our findings are best seen through the proposal that address forms may gain specific meanings within their particular context of use, despite having more conventional meanings attached to them.
Hispania
Forms of Address in Chilean Spanish
2010 •
Jim Michnowicz
