Reflections of gender and address in language use: The culturally driven motivation of the uses of Spanish oblique pronouns le and lo
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Bob de Jonge
Bob de Jonge (1958) is Associate Professor in Spanish linguistics at the University of Groningen. He wrote his PhD dissertation on uses ofser andestar in age expressions in Mexico and Venezuela in 1990 at the University of Leiden. He has published on various topics, mainly on Spanish linguistics, always from a highly functionalist perspective.
Abstract
This article deals with the problem of different distributions of the Spanish pronouns le and lo ‘him, her, polite you’ (and their morphological variants les, los, la and las) that may be observed in different realms of the Spanish speaking world (geography, sociologically etc.). In this paper, as a starting point, the more established and traditional case theory will be compared with the Control System Hypothesis in a particular corpus of a non-standard, Peninsular variant of Spanish. The hypothesis that will then be tested is that the use of the pronouns under focus in this particular variant, as well as in all variants, is based on one and the same semantic substance, but that (groups of) speakers may apply this substance for different communicative needs, resulting in different distributions of the forms in different language samples of the respective (groups of) speakers. These differences, then, are not representative of different meanings, but may be representing cultural differences of the respective speech group. The case in focus is middle-class Spanish of the 60s as represented in a novel by Miguel Delibes, and particularly how men and women are addressed. This corpus was chosen because of its particular, non-standard distribution of the pronouns in question, being therefore of particular interest to test the hypothesis.
About the author
Bob de Jonge (1958) is Associate Professor in Spanish linguistics at the University of Groningen. He wrote his PhD dissertation on uses of ser and estar in age expressions in Mexico and Venezuela in 1990 at the University of Leiden. He has published on various topics, mainly on Spanish linguistics, always from a highly functionalist perspective.
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Typographical iconicity and the communication of impressions: A relevance-theoretic perspective
- Reflections of gender and address in language use: The culturally driven motivation of the uses of Spanish oblique pronouns le and lo
- Request realisation strategies in Italian: The influence of the variables of Distance and Weight of Imposition on strategy choice
- The principle of cooperation as an application of the cooperative principle in some recent rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union regarding Romania
- Subtitling quality assessment from a relevance-theoretic perspective
- Pragmatics of proverb translation: The case of English and Persian
- Figurative language and persuasion in CPG sermons: The Example of a Gĩkũyũ televangelist
- Discursive-manipulative strategies in scam emails and SMS: The Nigerian perspective
- In my professor’s eyes: Faculty and perceived impoliteness in student emails
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Typographical iconicity and the communication of impressions: A relevance-theoretic perspective
- Reflections of gender and address in language use: The culturally driven motivation of the uses of Spanish oblique pronouns le and lo
- Request realisation strategies in Italian: The influence of the variables of Distance and Weight of Imposition on strategy choice
- The principle of cooperation as an application of the cooperative principle in some recent rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union regarding Romania
- Subtitling quality assessment from a relevance-theoretic perspective
- Pragmatics of proverb translation: The case of English and Persian
- Figurative language and persuasion in CPG sermons: The Example of a Gĩkũyũ televangelist
- Discursive-manipulative strategies in scam emails and SMS: The Nigerian perspective
- In my professor’s eyes: Faculty and perceived impoliteness in student emails
