Address in Portuguese and Spanish

Address in Portuguese and Spanish, 2020

In this chapter, we analyze and compare the use of second person singular terms of address (vos/usted/tú) in Argentinean mass-consumption audiovisual and printed texts from two different periods (1960 and 2015). Using the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive norms (axiological and objective in Blanco 2000), we show that the paradigm of the former has changed over the last fifty years and now overlaps with the latter. However, there is still a gap between both norms: the use of tú/contigo and the voseo reforzado ("double" voseo) in present subjunctive. We propose an explanation for both phenomena in terms of social proximity and symbolic identity.

2006

2016

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 ...

2011

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 in Medellin or Cali and surrounding areas. Results indicate that although the main extralinguistic factors conditioning pronoun choice are the same in both varieties, the outcome presents some differences. Furthermore, there are some indications of a possible linguistic change in progress in the pronominal address system of these varieties of Colombian Spanish as indicated by the variability in the use of the pronouns and the higher use of tú by women, younger individuals, and lower classes. iii To Gabriel Jacobo, whose arrival changed my world iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Professor Anna Maria Escobar, for her support and help through the various stages that led to the completion of this dissertation, and to my doctoral committee members: Professors José Ignacio Hualde, Andrea Golato, and Zsuzsanna Fagyal, for their guidance and support.

Address in Portuguese and Spanish

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.

Hispanic Studies Review, 2020

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, 2020

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., 2020

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, 2023

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.