How to regulate forms and usage of linguistic address in Spanish and Portuguese
What is it about?
How we address an interlocutor in Spanish or Portuguese (tú, usted, vosotros, vos.../você, vomecê, vocês...) is surely a significant sociolinguistic variable, due to a complex repertoire of linguistic forms and an intricate interplay of communicative intentions. The logic of variation in both languages - both grammar and norms of usage - is revealed with implicational scales in several selected case studies.
Why is it important?
The purpose of this study is twofold. On the one hand, it shows that there is rhyme and reason in the apparently chaotic variation of linguistic address in Spanish and Portuguese in terms of both the grammatical forms employed and the communicative intentions exchanged by the interlocutors. On the other hand, the same implicational logic articulates how specific grammatical forms are chosen and how those forms are used in different conversational situations.