Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 27:1 (2017) ► pp.87–114

Going beyond address forms

Variation and style in the use of the second-person pronouns tú and usted

| Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife
The cognitive properties of morphosyntactic choices are at the base of any usage, patterns and tendencies they could possibly reveal; thus, by means of the cognitive properties of salience and informativeness, variation in second-person tú and usted must be considered as inherently meaningful, implying that each form conveys a different meaning that is used to pursue concrete communicative goals in discursive interaction. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of tú and usted and their syntactic variants (preverbal, postverbal and omitted) reveals that these forms are unevenly distributed across different textual genres and socioprofessional affiliations of speakers. It may be concluded that tú and usted contribute toward shaping the different communicative styles on the basis of the cognitive dimensions of objectivity and subjectivity, respectively. Considering these pronouns as meaningful choices by themselves, this study attempts to go beyond the traditional approach that treats them as terms of address, delving into the discursive and cognitive traits which underlie such a variation.
Keywords: Tú, Usted, Sociolinguistics, Style, Address forms, Variation.
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 17 February 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.27.1.04ser
References (66)
Aijón Oliva, Miguel Ángel. 2009. “ Tú yusted como estrategias de estilo y persuasión en la comunicación publicitaria.” Tonos Digital 181 [[URL]].
Aijón Oliva, Miguel Ángel, y María José Serrano. 2013. Style in Syntax: Investigating Variation in Spanish Pronoun Subjects. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Alarcos Llorach, Emilio 1999. Gramática de la Lengua Española. Madrid: España.Google Scholar
Almeida, Manuel, Juana Rodríguez, and Adela Morín. 2006. “Pronombres de trato y clase social en una comunidad canaria.” Revista de Filología de la Universidad de La Laguna 241: 11–24.Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira 2001. “Accessibility Theory: An Overview.” In Text Representation: Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects, ed. by Teed Sanders, Joost Schilperoord, and Wilbert Spooren, 29–87. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ardehali, Paula Elizabeth 1990. “Pronoun Exchange as a Barometer of Social Change.” Dialectal Anthropology 151: 82–86.Google Scholar
Beard, Adrian 2000. The Language of Politics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Beaugrande, Robert, and Wolfgang U. Dressler. 1997. Introducción a la Lingüística del Texto. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, and Susan Conrad. 2009. Register, Genre, and Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blas Arroyo, José Luis. 2000. “Mire usted Sr. González…Personal Deixis in Spanish Political Electoral Debate.” Journal of Pragmatics 321: 1–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. Sociolingüística del Español. Desarrollos y Perspectivas en el Estudio de la Lengua Española en Contexto Social. Madrid: Cátedra.Google Scholar
Branigan, Holly P., Martin J. Pickering, and Mikihiro Tanaka. 2008. “Contributions of Animacy to Grammatical Function Assignment and Word Order during Production.” Lingua 1181: 172–189. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Roger, and Albert Gilman. 1960. “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity.” In Style in Language, ed. by Thomas Sebeok, 253–276. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Croft, William, and Allan D. Cruse. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Brad. 1996. ‘Pragmatic Weigth’ and Spanish Subject Pronouns: The Pragmatic and Discourse Uses of ‘tú’ and ‘yo’ in Spoken Madrid Spanish.” Journal of Pragmatics 261: 543–565. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duszak, A. 2002. Us and Others. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enríquez, Emilia. 1984. El pronombre personal sujeto en la lengua española hablada en Madrid. Madrid: CSIC.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Finegan, Edward. 1995. “Subjectivity and Subjectivisation in Language: An Introduction.” In Subjectivity and Subjectivisation in Language, ed. by Dieter Stein, and Susan Wright, 1–15. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fried, Mirjam. 2009. “Word Order.” In Grammar, Meaning and Pragmatics, ed. by Frank Brisard, Jan-Ola Östman, and Jef Verschueren, 289–300. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geluykens, Ronald. 1992. From Discourse Process to Grammatical Construction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giora, Israel R. 2003. Salience, Context and Figurative Language. Oxford: University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A Construction-grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 2001. Syntax: An Introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gundel, Jeanette K., and Thorstein Fretheim. 2009. “Information Structure.” In Grammar, Meaning and Pragmatics, ed. by Frank Brisard, Jan-Ola Östman, and Jef Verschueren, 149–160. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gundel, Jeanette K., Nancy Hedberg, and Ron Zacharski. 1993. “Cognitive Status and the Form of Referring Expressions in Discourse.” Language 691: 274–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hidalgo Downing, Raquel. 2003. La Tematización en el Español Hablado. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Hummel, Martin 2010. “Reflexiones metodológicas y teóricas sobre el estudio de las formas de tratamiento en el mundo Hispanoablante, a Partir de una Investigación en Santiago de Chile.” In Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico, ed. by Martin Hummel, Bettina Kluge, María Eugenia Vázquez Laslop, 103–162. México: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Kendall, Martha. 1981. “Toward a Semantic Approach to Terms of Address: A Critique of Deterministic Models in Sociolinguistics.” Language in Communication 1 (2–3): 237–254. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keniston, Hayward. 1937. Syntax. The Syntax of Castilian Prose. Chicago: University Press.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form. Topic, Focus and Mental Representations of Discourse Structures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
1994. “The Limits of Continuity: Discreteness in Cognitive Semantics.” In Continuity in Linguistic Semantics, ed. by Catherine Fuch, and Bernard Victorri, 9–20. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009. Investigations in Cognitive Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martiny, Thierry. 1996. “Forms of Address in French and Dutch: A Sociopragmatic Approach.” Language Sciences 18 (3–4): 765–775. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Medina López, Javier. 2009. “El tú del presidente. La ruptura del rol social.” Revista Española de Lingüística 39 (1): 77–109.Google Scholar
Medina Morales, Francisco. 2010. “La metodología en los estudios sobre formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en español.” In Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico, ed. by Martin Hummel, Bettina Kluge, and María Eugenia Vázquez Laslop, 23–56. México: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Miñano López Julia. 2007. Y ahora la gramática, 1. Nivel principiante. Barcelona: Publicaciones y Ediciones de la Universidad de Barcelona.Google Scholar
Morford, J. 1997. “Social Indexicality in French Pronominal Address.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 71: 3–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mühlhäusler, Peter, and Rom Harré. 1990. Pronouns and People. Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Nowikow, Wiaczeslav. 2010. “Sobre los motivos del empleo de tú y usted. de estudiantes universitarios en Guadalajara (Jalisco, México) desde la perspectiva de los enfoques socio y etológico-lingüísticos.” In Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico, ed. by Martin Hummel, Bettina Kluge, and María Eugenia Vázquez Laslop, 795–808. México: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Pennycook, Alastair. 1994. “The Politics of Pronouns.” ELTJ 48 (2): 173–178. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prince, Ellen F. 1981. “Toward a Taxonomy of Given-New Information.” In Radical Pragmatics, . ed. by Peter Cole, 223–255. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Rosengren, Paul. 1974. Presencia o Ausencia de los Pronombres Personales Sujetos en Español Moderno. Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1972. “On the Analysability of Stories by Children.” In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, ed. by John Gumperz, and Dell Hymes, 325–435. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007. “A Tutorial on Membership Categorization.” Journal of Pragmatics 391: 462–482. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sánchez López, Cristina. 1993. “Una anomalía del sistema pronominal español.” Dicenda: Cuadernos de Filología Hispánica 111: 259–284.Google Scholar
Serrano, María José. 2001. “La deixis social en los usos pronominales de cortesía en español.” Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique. 9–10: 265–280.Google Scholar
. 2006. Gramática del discurso. Madrid: Akal.Google Scholar
. 2011. “‘Otras personas y yo’: Variación socioestilística del pronombre nosotros. en conversaciones espontáneas.” In Variación variable, ed. by María Jos� Serrano, 93–126. Almería: Círculo Rojo/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.Google Scholar
Serrano, María José, and Miguel Ángel Aijón Oliva. 2012. “Cuando tú eres yo: La inespecificidad referencial de tú. como recurso de objetivación en el discurso.” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 601: 541–563. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “Discourse Objectivization, Social Variation and Style in the Use of Spanish Second-Person tú.” Folia Lingüística 48 (1): 225–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen. 2001. Sociolingüística y pragmática del Español. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. “Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life.” Language and Communication 231: 193–229 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, Helen. 1996. “Reconsidering Power and Distance.” Journal of Pragmatics 261: 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stewart, Miranda. 2003. “‘Pragmatic Weight’ and Face: Pronominal Presence and the Case of the Spanish Second Person Singular Pronoun tú.” Journal of Pragmatics 351: 191–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stirling, Lesley, and Lenore Manderson. 2011. “About you: Empathy, Objectivity and Authority.” Journal of Pragmatics 431: 1681–1502. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Theodoropoulou, I. 2014. Sociolinguistics of Style and Social Class in Contemporary Athens. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Compernolle, Rémi A. 2008. Second-Person Pronoun Use and Address Strategies in On-line Personal Ads from Quebec.” Journal of Pragmatics 401: 2062–2070. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011. Developing a Sociocultural Orientation to Variation in Language.” Language & Communication 31 (1): 86–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Watts, Richard, Sachiko, Ide, and Konrad Ehlich. 1992. “Linguistic Politeness and Politic Behaviour: Reconsidering Claims for Universality.” In Politeness in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice, by Richard Watts et al., 21–42. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, John. 1990. Politically Speaking: The Pragmatic Analysis of Political Language. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Williams, Lawrence, and Rémi A. van Compernolle. 2009. “Second-person Pronoun Use in French Language Discussion Fora.” Journal of French Language Studies 19 (3): 363–380. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zupnik, Janette. 1994. “A Pragmatic Analysis of the Use of Person Deixis in Political Discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 211: 339–383. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (10)

Cited by ten other publications

Schoenmakers, Gert-Jan, Jihane Hachimi & Helen de Hoop
2024. Can You Make a Difference? The Use of (In)Formal Address Pronouns in Advertisement Slogans. Journal of International Consumer Marketing 36:2 ► pp. 99 ff. DOI logo
Guarin, Daniel
2022. El uso de pronombres de tratamiento en el departamento del Quindío (Colombia). Miradas 17:2 ► pp. 65 ff. DOI logo
Hernández Corchete, Sira
2021. Tú, nosotros, ellos y todos. La deixis personal como estrategia publicitaria del Ministerio de Defensa español. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 87 ► pp. 203 ff. DOI logo
Aijón Oliva, Miguel A.
2018. Not just you: The construction of radio audiences through second-person choice in Peninsular Spanish. Language & Communication 60 ► pp. 80 ff. DOI logo
Aijón Oliva, Miguel A.
2020. It can be us or you. The desubjectification of viewpoint through person choice in Spanish oral and written media discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 163 ► pp. 4 ff. DOI logo
Aijón Oliva, Miguel Á.
2019. La elección de segunda persona y la construcción de identidades contextuales en el discurso radiofónico de una comunidad peninsular . Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics 7:2 ► pp. 125 ff. DOI logo
Serrano, María José
2018. Managing subjectivity: Omission and expression of first-person singular object a mí in Spanish media discourse. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 63:3 ► pp. 423 ff. DOI logo
Serrano, María José
2018. Deictic and desubjectivizing meaning in advertising discourse: The usage of Spanish te and se clitics. Lingua 216 ► pp. 28 ff. DOI logo
Serrano, María José
2018. Análisis cognitivo-discursivo y situacional de las formas de tratamiento en función de sujeto y de objeto en español. Spanish in Context 15:1 ► pp. 103 ff. DOI logo
Serrano, María José
2019. Los objetos verbales de persona como variantes de tratamiento interpersonal canario en la red social Facebook. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 32:1 ► pp. 329 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.