Article published In:
Spanish in Context: Online-First Articles(Im)polite uses of vocatives in present-day Madrilenian Spanish
The present study aims to examine the socio-pragmatic scope of vocatives in present-day colloquial Spanish. As
prototypical deictic markers, directly calling upon the addressee, vocatives are considered crucial mechanisms in the creation and
maintaining of interpersonal relationships during interaction. This deictic potential makes them highly appropriate strategies at
the service of face work and (im)politeness. However, the relation between (Spanish) vocatives and (im)politeness has scarcely
been explored. In an attempt to fill this research gap, the present analysis empirically examines the socio-pragmatic functions
related to the expression of (im)politeness that the Spanish vocative is able to fulfill in colloquial conversations. The results
show that its socio-pragmatic multifunctionality needs to be evaluated in the broad context, not only by taking into account the
hosting speech act and the vocative’s semantic features, but also extra-linguistic parameters, such as the interpersonal
relationship and the speaker’s age.
Keywords: vocative, (im)politeness, corpus linguistics
Article outline
- 1.Introduction: Vocatives and (im)politeness
- 2.The vocative: Definition and characteristics
- 3.The different faces of politeness
- 3.1Politeness as a socio-pragmatic concept
- 3.2Politeness as a sociocultural concept
- 4.Data and methodology
- 5.Analysis
- 5.1How does the Spanish vocative contribute to the expression of (im)politeness?
- 5.2To what degree does the vocative’s semantic core meaning prompt or sabotage particular (im)polite effects on the interlocutor’s face?
- 5.3To what degree do contextual and socio-relational variables affect the vocative’s expression of (im)politeness?
- 6.Conclusions
- Notes
-
References
Published online: 30 May 2024
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.22008.del
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.22008.del
References (47)
Aijmer, Karin. 2019. “Ooh
whoops I’m sorry! Teenagers’ use of English apology expressions.” Journal of
Pragmatics 1421: 258–269.
Alonso-Cortés Manteca, Ángel. 1999. “Las
construcciones exclamativas. La interjección y las expresiones
vocativas.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua
española, vol.31, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 3993–4050. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
Albelda, Marta. 2004. “Cortesía
en diferentes situaciones comunicativas. La conversación coloquial y la entrevista sociológica
semiformal.” In Pragmática sociocultural: Estudios sobre el discurso
de cortesía en español, ed. by Diana Bravo, and Antonio Briz, 109–134. Barcelona: Ariel.
Albelda, Marta, and Antonio Briz. 2010. “Aspectos
pragmáticos. Cortesía y atenuantes verbales en las dos orillas a través de muestras orales.” La
lengua española en América: normas y usos
actuales: 237–260.
Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. 2000. “Emerging adulthood: A
theory of development from the late teens through the twenties.” American
psychologist 55(5): 469–480.
Barros García, María Jesús. 2010. “Actos de habla y cortesía
valorizadora: las invitaciones.” Revista electrónica de estudios
filológicos 191: n.p.
Bernal, María. 2007. Categorización
sociopragmática de la cortesía y de la descortesía. Un estudio de la conversación coloquial
española. PhD dissertation. Stockholm University.
. 2008. “Do
insults always insult? Genuine impoliteness versus non-genuine impoliteness in colloquial
Spanish.” Pragmatics 18(4): 775 – 802.
Blas Arroyo, José Luis. 2003. “Perspectivas
(socio)lingüísticas complementarias en el estudio de la variación y el cambio lingüístico en
español.” Estudios de
Sociolingüística 4(2): 653–692.
Bravo, Diana. 2003. “Actividades
de cortesía, imagen social y contextos socioculturales: una
introduccion.” In Actas del primer coloquio del programa
EDICE, ed. by Diana Bravo, 98–108.
. 2005. Estudios
de la (des) cortesía en español: categorías conceptuales y aplicaciones a corpora orales y
escritos. Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken.
Briz, Antonio. 2005. “Atenuación
y cortesía verbal en la conversación coloquial: su tratamiento en la clase de
ELE.” In Actas del programa de formación para profesorado de
ELE 2006, 227–255.
. 2010. “La
cortesía al hablar español.” III Jornadas de Formación de Profesores de ELE en China.
Suplementos SinoELE 31: n.p.
Blanco, Ramiro Carlos H., and María Zulma M. Kulikowski. 2018. “Las
formas de tratamiento como actividad estratégica y como índice de categorización de sociedades de aproximación o
distanciamiento.” Texts in
Process 4(2): 174–193.
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1978. “Universals
in language usage: Politeness phenomena.” Questions and politeness: Strategies in social
interaction: 56–311. Cambridge University Press.
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness.
Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, Roger, and Albert Gilman. 1960. “The
pronouns of power and solidarity.” Style in
language: 252–281.
Castellano Ascencio, Milton Daniel. 2017. “Análisis pragmático de la
función de los tratamientos nominales en actos de habla descorteses en Medellín
(Colombia).” Forma y
función 30(2): 139–162.
Edeso Natalías, Verónica. 2005. “Usos
discursivos del vocativo en español.” Español actual: Revista de español
vivo 841: 123–142.
Eisenstein, Evelyn. 2005. “Adolescência:
definições, conceitos e critérios.” Adolesc
Saude 2(2): 6–7.
Fraser, Bruce, and William Nolen. 1981. “The
association of deference with linguistic form.” International Journal of the Sociology of
Language 271: 93–109.
Haverkate, Henk. 2004. “El
análisis de la cortesía comunicativa: categorización pragmalingüística de la cultura
española.” Pragmática sociocultural: estudios sobre el discurso de cortesía en
español: 55–66.
Hernández Flores, Nieves. 2004. “Politeness
as face enhancement.” Current trends in the pragmatics of
Spanish: 265–284.
. 2013. “Facework:
characteristics and typology in communicative interaction.” Pragmática
Sociocultural 1(2): 175–198.
Holmes, Janet. 2000. “Women
at work: Analysing women’s talk at New Zealand Workplaces.” Australian Review of Applied
Linguistics 22(2): 1–17.
Jørgensen, Annette Myre, and Eli-Marie Drange. 2012. “La
lengua juvenil de las metrópolis Madrid y Santiago de Chile.” Arena
Romanistica 91: 74–96.
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 1997. “A
multilevel approach in the study of talk-in
interaction.” Pragmatics 7(1): 1–20.
. 2004. “¿Es
universal la cortesía?” Pragmática sociocultural: estudios sobre el discurso de cortesía en
español: 39–54.
Kleinknecht, Friederike. 2013. “Mexican
güey – from vocative to discourse marker: a case of
grammaticalization?” In Vocative! Addressing between System and
Performance, ed. by Barbara Sonnenhauser, and Patricia N. Aziz Hanna, 235–268. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Kluge, Bettina, and María I. Moyna. 2019. It’s
Not All about You: New Perspectives on Address
Research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 1999. “The
distribution and function of vocatives in American and British English
conversation.” In Out of corpora: studies in honour of Stig
Johansson, ed. by Hilde Hasselgard, and Signe Oksefjiell, 107–118. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
. 2014. The
pragmatics of politeness. Oxford studies in sociolinguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Martínez-Lara, José A. 2009. “El uso del vocativo como
estrategia de cortesía entre jóvenes universitarios de Caracas. Una primera indagación.” Lingua
Americana
XIII 251: 100–120.
Moreno Fernández, Francisco. 1996. “Metodología
del Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y de
América.” Linguistica 81: 257–287.
Portolés, José, and Ignacio Vázquez. 2000. “Mitigating
or compensatory strategies in the expression of politeness in Spanish and English? Hombre/mujer as politeness
discourse markers revisited.” In Transcultural Communication:
Pragmalinguistics Aspects, ed. by Pilar Navarro Errasti et al., 219–226. Zaragoza: Ambar.
R Core Team. 2022. R: A language and
environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienne, Austria. URL [URL]
Rendle-Short, Johanna. 2010. “
Mate
as a term of address in ordinary interaction.” Journal of
Pragmatics 42(5): 1201–1218.
Stenström, Anna-Brita, and Annette Myre Jørgensen. 2008. “A
question of politeness? A contrastive study of phatic language in teenage
conversation.” Special Issue of
Pragmatics 18(4): 636–657.
Voorhees, Clay M., et al. 2017. “Service
encounters, experiences and the customer journey: Defining the field and a call to expand our
lens.” Journal of Business
Research 791: 269–280.
Zeileis, Achim, David Meyer, and Kurt Hornik. 2007. “Residual-based
shadings for visualizing (conditional) independence.” Journal of Computational and Graphical
Statistics 16(3): 507–525.
Zimmermann, Klaus. 2003. “Constitución
de la identidad y anticortesía verbal entre jóvenes masculinos hablantes de
español.” In La perspectiva no etnocentrista de la cortesía:
Identidad sociocultural de las comunidades hispanohablantes, ed. by Diana Bravo, 47–59. Stockholm: Actas del Primer Coloquio del Programa EDICE.