The occurrence of the forms of address tú and usted in valencian community

discursive relief in focus

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the occurrence of the forms tú and usted in oral Valencian Spanish, via discourse plans. Considering language as an adaptive system, functionally oriented to meet the communicative needs of speakers in specific contexts, this study was based on the theoretical assumptions of Linguistic Functionalism, more specifically that of the North American strand (Givón, 1995 And 2001; Hopper, 1979; Hopper; Thompson, 1980). We analyzed the data, which was obtained from 6 semi-structured interviews from the Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de Valencia (PRESEVAL) corpus. The occurrences analyzed were coded and quantified for the purposes of frequency of use. The results showed that the less marked form tú was predominant in a context that was also less marked, i.e. figura. Similarly, this pronoun was also favored in discourse level background 01, since this is a less marked context than background 2. Surprisingly, the form usted, although with a low register, was not favored in discourse level background 2, a context which requires more cognitive processing and in which information does not flow as smoothly as in background 1. The association of these forms with discourse plans reveals distinct patterns, highlighting how they influence the organization of discourse and adapt to different communicative contexts. These observations corroborate the importance of the functionalist marking principle in understanding the use of these forms of address.