Una comparación de las formas pronominales de tratamiento en los estudiantes hablantes de español y catalán en Barcelona
| Autor | Alexandra Kathryn Osváth |
| Cargo | MA in Applied Linguistics and Language Acquisition in Multilingual Contexts from the University of Barcelona in 2014 |
| Páginas | 127-155 |
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Languages around the world linguistically mark differences in relationships between members of a social group, yet these linguistic elements vary in use from language to language, from society to society (Kasper, 1990: 196; Lakoff, 1973). The address system of a given language inherently relects how the culture views its social relationships and the pragmatic implications of how these relationships are marked (Stewart, 1999: 121). Social relationships in societies across the world have constantly been evolving, and as social distances change, so do the grammatical relections of these social distances. In the 20th and 21st centuries, many languages that mark social distances with different pronominal forms of address have shown a similar trend: speakers have been moving away from more formal terms of address (in this paper, V) in favor of more informal pronouns (T) (Blas Arroyo, 1995: 24; Carrasco Santana, 2002: 42 as cited in Sanromán, 2010: 738; Curiel, 2011: 114; Stewart, 1999: 126). The present pilot study, which originated in a Master’s thesis at the University of Barcelona, investigates the pronominal choices made by Castilian Spanish and Catalan speaking students at the University of Barcelona today.
In their inluential study, Brown and Gilman (1960: 255) proposed a non-reciprocal "power semantic" regarding the historical use of the informal and formal pronouns as terms of address. The relationships between two people, according to Brown and Gilman (1960: 255), are based on the power that one person has over the other, since "both cannot have power in the same area of behavior." In medieval Europe, individuals belonging to the same social class used the same form of address with each other: members of higher social classes used V amongst themselves, while those of the lower classes used T when addressing their equals (Brown & Gilman, 1960: 256). Eventually, members within the same social class began to differentiate between relations of greater or less intimacy among their social equals, marking these differences with T (greater intimacy) and V (less intimacy) (Brown & Gilman, 1960: 257). Brown and Gilman (1960: 257) coined this evolution as the "solidarity semantic." Solidarity, according to Brown and Gilman (1960: 258), primarily comes from like-mindedness, such as "political membership, family, religion, profession, sex, and birthplace." In non-reciprocal, or asymmetrical, relationships, the person holding more power addresses his or her less powerful interlocutor with the informal T and expects to receive V in return (Brown & Gilman, 1960: 259). In symmetrical, or solidary, relationships, both interlocutors use the same pronoun,
T. In relationships that are equal but not solidary, the pronoun V is reciprocally exchanged between the two interlocutors (Brown & Gilman, 1960: 259).
As power and solidarity are grammatically solidiied in social relationships by the use of T and V, these sociolinguistic norms become regarded as issues of cultural politeness by members of a given society. In her state-of-the-art article on linguistic politeness, Gabriele Kasper (1990) proposed two types of politeness: strategic (194) and social indexing (196). She examined Brown and Levinson’s (1987) proposal that politeness is strategic in the sense that the speaker’s aim is to avoid conlict, or "face-threatening acts," for either the speaker or the interlocutor (Brown & Levinson, 1987: 65ff as cited in Kasper, 1990: 194). Kasper was critical of Brown and Levinson’s view that every interaction between two interlocutors could threaten either individual’s positive or negative face, claiming that "communication is [therefore] seen as a fundamentally dangerous and antagonistic endeavor" (Kasper, 1990: 194). Kasper next proposed the view of politeness as social indexing, meaning that two interlocutors’ linguistic choices relect the status of their social relationship, such as we have seen previously in Brown and Gilman (1960) (Kasper, 1990: 196). Kochman (1984) examined the sociolinguistic use of "social warrants," or the address term to which each interlocutor is entitled, based upon the individual’s "ascribed characteristics (age, sex, family positions) and achieved social properties (rank, title, social position); and individuals’ ‘situated performance’" (Kochman, 1984: 202, as cited in Kasper, 1990: 196). In order for address terms to successfully convey politeness between interlocutors, "they have to conform to socioculturally prescribed or permitted choices" (Kasper, 1990: 196). In the case of nonconformity, when a speaker chooses an address term in contradiction to the
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society’s sociocultural politeness norms, the interlocutor might take offense and/or interpret the speaker’s attitude as impolite (Kasper, 1990: 196).
We can trace the modern Castilian Spanish V form, usted, back to the irst written appearance of vuestra merced in 1270 (Olmo, 2012: 135). During the late Middle Ages (XIV and XV centuries), the formal term vos referred to a singular subject, and vosotros (from vos otros, you others) was the plural address form, with no reference to formality (Olmo, 2012: 136). The urban populations gradually adopted vos in situations that required a term more formal than tú (Olmo, 2012: 136). Tú was used only between interlocutors with close intimacy, or speakers with higher power addressing their inferiors (Olmo, 2012: 139). Because commoners addressed each other with the above terms, vuestra merced developed as a formal address term for public oficials and other dignitaries during the Golden Age (Moreno, 2002: 17; Olmo, 2012: 137). The Spanish of the Golden Age originally used all three singular forms of address, tú, vos, and vuestra merced, but vos was too ambiguous because the speaker risked offending the interlocutor if he or she deemed that this term was not respectful enough (Moreno, 2002: 17). In this manner, vos was used less and less in Castilian Spanish until the more formal vuestra merced became the accepted form of singular formal address (Moreno, 2002: 17). Over time, the two words vuestra merced fused into the single word used today, usted, which irst appeared in written text in 1629 (Olmo, 2012: 139). We turn now to the modern pronominal terms of address in Castilian Spanish in Barcelona.
The speaker’s use of the informal forms tú and vosotros/as demonstrates the speaker’s closeness with the interlocutor, so these forms are appropriate in informal contexts, among family members, and in close relationships2(Real Academia Española, 2005). Tú is followed by a verb in the second person singular form, and can be masculine or feminine (Real Academia Española, 2007). Vosotros, according to the same dictionary, is the second person plural pronoun, and is the masculine form; vosotras is the feminine form (Real Academia Española, 2007).
Usted and ustedes are followed by verbs conjugated in the third person singular and plural forms, respectively (Real Academia Española, 2005). In mainland Spain, usted and ustedes are the formal versions of tú and vosotros/as, used in situations where the speaker desires to be polite, show respect, or distance him or herself from the interlocutor3(Real Academia Española, 2007).
Several studies have been conducted to investigate university students’ use of T and V in different regions of Spain. Alba de Diego and Sánchez Lobato’s (1980) study of students in Madrid conirmed Brown and Gilman’s (1960) work on power and solidarity in terms of pronoun selection and concluded that the use of the reciprocal T among university students in Madrid was on the rise at that time (Alba de Diego & Sánchez Lobato, 1980, as cited in Sanromán, 2006: section 2). In her 1993 study of university students, also in Madrid, Molina Martos wrote that the use of T was already the norm among people of an equal status in the early 1990s; using V in this case would sound marked (Molina Martos, 1993: 255). Carricaburo explained that in Madrid and in other urban areas in Spain, people of equal status could exchange the reciprocal, informal T or the reciprocal, formal V (Carricaburo, 1997: 10). By the mid-1990s, more people were using the informal reciprocal T rather than V; T was almost the only address pronoun used among family members, people sharing the same profession, and between youths (Carricaburo, 1997: 10). She also noted that the age of the interlocutor was the main factor that inluenced youths to choose V or T, followed by variables such as social class or degree of familiarity (Carricaburo, 1997: 11).
Carrasco Santana (2002) revealed a changing Spain, where by the early 2000s, the use of T was extending beyond these situations into those in which the speaker did not know the interlocutors, and into situations
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that "could even be considered formal"4(Carrasco Santana, 2002: 41 as cited in Sanromán, 2010: 738). Most recently, Curiel’s 2011 study conirmed that young people today in the region of Extremadura, Spain are using T in many more situations than were acceptable in the past; she also noted that the older generation today still uses V as they learned decades ago, since this is how they are accustomed to addressing their interlocutors (Curiel, 2011: 114).
Molina Martos conducted a study investigating university students’ use of T and V in Madrid in 1988. She then performed a follow-up study in 2000, once again looking at Madrid university students’ T and V use. She compared the results of these two studies in an article published in 2002, looking for trends and any changes that she found in the 2000 study. Despite the passing of time, Molina Martos did not ind many differences in students’ pronominal address choices in her two studies.
In 2006, Pedroviejo Esteruelas conducted a study of 28 university students in Valladolid. Pedroviejo Esteruelas investigated how speakers addressed interlocutors of different ages and different social groups, looking at both pronominal and nominal forms of address (Pedroviejo Esteruelas, 2006). He found that the speaker’s use of T was linked to the socio-professional status of the interlocutor, and the speaker’s use of T and V was be related to the age of the interlocutor (Pedroviejo Esteruelas, 2006).
Sanromán’s 2006 study examined pronoun usage among 110 students in Galicia. While Galicia is a bilingual community with two oficial languages, Galician and Castilian Spanish, Sanromán did not consider both languages in her study, focusing only on Castilian Spanish. Her participants were 50 students of Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela and 60 young students at a rural secondary school (Sanromán, 2006: section 3). She sought to determine how speakers chose which address pronoun to use with their interlocutor and whether V is currently threatened by the widespread use of T (Sanromán, 2006: section 6). Sanromán found that T was ubiquitous in relationships among family and friends, pointing out that this same result was found two decades earlier in similar studies (Sanromán, 2006: section 6). Like previous researchers, Sanromán (2006, section 6) also found that age was the main factor that inluenced address pronoun selection, whether the interlocutors were strangers on the street or in a higher social position.
In 2010, Sanromán conducted a study exploring recent trends in address pronoun usage among 61 youth in Cádiz, 28 of whom were university students, and 33 of whom were secondary school students (Sanromán, 2010: 740). Sanromán had the same objectives as in her 2006 study, and found similar results as in her previous study in regards to pronoun choice and age (Sanromán, 2010: 750).
The results of these studies in recent decades tend to suggest that Castilian Spanish in Spain seems to be evolving towards a more ubiquitous use of T and a decline of the use of V. The more widespread use of T in Spain today could be due to a shift in Spain from ixed hierarchical relationships to equal relationships introduced with democracy (Blas Arroyo, 1995: 24; Carrasco Santana, 2002: 42 as cited in Sanromán, 2010: 738).
In medieval Catalan, tu was the informal term used in intimate relationships of familiarity, while vós was the formal term reserved for addressing a single person and the term vosaltres came into use for addressing more than one person (Olmo, 2012: 146). In the creation of a more formal term than vós, the Catalan language was inluenced by the Castilian Spanish vuestra merced, which became the calque vostra mercè in Catalan and expanded rapidly during the XVI and XVII centuries to later become grammaticalized as vostè (Olmo, 2012: 146). A plural form eventually developed: vostès, which was more formal than vosaltres (Olmo, 2012: 146). Unlike its Castilian Spanish counterpart, vós did not gradually fall into disuse. Once the Catalan language form gained an oficial status and was used in Catalonia’s Mancomunitat starting in 1914 and Generalitat in 1931, vós was adopted as the personal address pronoun used in oficial and commercial contexts (Olmo, 2012: 147). Today, Catalan moves between efforts to keep it as an autonomous language and the many
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factors that encourage linguistic convergence with Castilian Spanish, such as new speakers, widespread bilingualism, and the presence of mass media (Vila i Moreno, 2004: 36). Even without quantitative data, scholars suggest a convergence between Catalan and Castilian Spanish today (Boix & Vila, 1998: 256). We will now examine the modern uses of the pronominal forms of address in Catalan.
Tu is a singular second person pronoun that "expresses familiarity with the interlocutor", meaning that it is used in intimate contexts (Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2007). Todolí Cervera (1998: 33), in her explanation of social deixis, noted that tu is also used to signify equality between the speaker and the interlocutor, which is either based on age or social position. Vosaltres, the plural of tu, is used to address more than one person, excluding the speaker (Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2007).
Vós is a second person plural pronoun with a singular meaning that is used in contexts of intermediate formality where the speaker would not address the interlocutor as tu or vostè (Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2007). Vosaltres is also the plural address form of vós, in addition to tu (Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2007). Coromines (1971: 90), as cited in Todolí Cervera (1998: 33), stated that in the early 1970s, vós was used in cases where the two interlocutors of equal status shared "friendly respect"5due to similar age, social status or even gender.
Todolí Cervera (1998: 33) noted that vostè can mark an unequal social relationship between two interlocutors, one of whom is superior to the other, either because of age or social status, and can also indicate social distancing. Referring to the interlocutor in the third person singular form "conveys indirectness," which creates distance between the speaker and the interlocutor (Nogué, 2011: 138). Vilà Comajoan (2001: 96) and the Gramàtica de la llengua catalana (Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2010 [2002]: 128) noted that vostè is more commonly used today than the traditional vós. In addition to marking social distancing, vostè and also vós can be used if the speaker wishes to sound more polite (Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2010 [2002]: 128).
The use of pronominal terms of address in Catalan is subject to changing social relationships, which can directly affect the usage of certain pronouns (Todolí Cervera, 1998: 33). Social relationships in Catalonia have evolved from strict, marked divisions between the upper and lower classes at the beginning of the 20th
century to blurred social relationships at the end of the 20th century thanks to immigration and a gradual shift from a rural economy to an industrial one (Boix, 2006: 10-11). The resulting social mobility enabled a change in interpersonal relationships (Boix, 2006: 11) which, as Spanish linguists have argued, led to the preference of the informal forms of address (Blas Arroyo, 1995:24).
Todolí Cervera noted that vós is mostly limited to bureaucracy or to rural areas today (Todolí Cervera, 1998: 33). Because the Catalan government has used vós in bureaucracy for the past 30 years, young people today now view this address pronoun "as more formal and distant than vostè(s)" (Nogué, 2008: 226). This view today is moving away from the traditionally intermediate status of vós that we have seen previously (Olmo, 2012: 146).
The aim of this study is to compare the traditional uses of the pronominal forms of address in Castilian Spanish and Catalan with results found in a study of 61 Catalan-Spanish bilingual students of Catalan and Hispanic philology at the University of Barcelona. Social factors, but not functional ones, will be examined in this study in order to compare my results with those of previous studies of the social factors related to the use of pronominal address forms in Castilian Spanish. In particular, I will be comparing my results to those
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of Sanromán (2006, 2010), as I will explain below. My review of the literature has lead me to develop the following research goals for the present study:
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I aim to explore the use of T/V pronouns in Castilian Spanish among Catalan university students.
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I also aim to explore the use of T/V pronouns in Catalan among Catalan university students.
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Finally, I will explore to what extent both languages use T/V in a parallel way.
My hypotheses were the following:
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In Castilian Spanish, results would be parallel to those of the rest of Spain, with age as a more inluential variable than status.
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While I cannot predict uses in Catalan from previous quantitative data due to a lack thereof, Catalan does seem to follow the same trend of reducing V as in Castilian Spanish today, but may be different in that Catalan has three forms of address, not two as in Castilian Spanish: tu, vós, and vostè.
I decided to base the questionnaire that I used in this study on the questionnaire that Sanromán used in two recent studies mentioned previously: one examining bilingual populations in Galicia (Sanromán, 2006), and the other studying a monolingual population in Cádiz (Sanromán, 2010). Because Sanromán found the questionnaire to be rigorous enough to use in two separate studies in different areas of Spain, I decided that it would be an appropriate starting point for my study as well. I will compare my results to Sanromán’s 2006 study and other inluential studies in the literature to look for similarities and differences. I will generally focus on Sanromán’s indings from the university students in Santiago because the present study will also examine bilingual university students in an urban area, so the results will be more comparable than with other studies.
Sanromán’s questionnaire, and therefore the questionnaire of the present study, was divided into two parts: closed questions, where the respondents selected whether they would use T or V with an interlocutor, and which pronoun they would receive in turn; and open-ended questions asking about the speakers’ reasoning behind address pronoun choice (Sanromán, 2006: section 3). I found it necessary, however, to adapt Sanromán’s questionnaire to the group of students in particular that were my participants.
First of all, in her 2006 study, Sanromán did not look at the differences in how her Galician respondents spoke to various interlocutors in Galician vs. in Castilian Spanish; she looked only at how they spoke in Castilian Spanish. In the present study, however, I examined my bilingual participants’ pronoun choices in both languages, Catalan and Castilian Spanish (tú or usted in Castilian Spanish as compared to tu, vostè or vós in Catalan).
Additionally, Sanromán offered the questionnaire to her respondents in Castilian Spanish only (Sanromán, 2006: Appendix), even though the Galician respondents were most likely Galician-Spanish bilinguals. To improve upon this in my own survey, I developed two versions of the same survey and let my participants choose in which language they would read and answer the questions: either in Castilian Spanish or in Catalan. The entire questionnaire in both languages can be found in Appendix A.
Furthermore, Sanromán did not ask her respondents which language was their L1, Galician or Castilian Spanish. To amend this, I asked my participants which language they identiied with as their L1, which will be explained in greater detail shortly.
In the section in Sanromán’s survey about the students’ use of T/V at university, she asked students only about their T/V use with university professors and other students that they knew well and had met for the irst time. Sanromán omitted the variable of age and looked only at two different social positions with two
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levels of proximity (Sanromán, 2006: Appendix). Since the literature review indicated that age, followed by social position and proximity, were the most important variables in students’ use of pronominal forms of address, I found it most relevant to ask participants which pronominal forms of address they used with a range of people of different ages, social positions and two levels of proximity at the university. However, I did not ask students which address pronouns they used with friends and childhood friends, as Sanromán did, because 100% of these results were T in all previous studies, including Sanromán’s (Alba de Diego & Sánchez Lobato, 1980: 118, 122; Molina Martos, 1993: 255; Sanromán, 2006: section 4.1.2).
I chose to list the Catalan address pronouns in the order of tu, vostè, and vós because the literature review indicated that today, Catalan speakers use tu and vostè more commonly than vós (Vilà Comajoan, 2001: 96; Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2010 [2002]: 128), especially Catalan youth (Nogué, 2008: 226).
Finally, I decided to address participants as T in my survey because it sounded more natural given their ages than Sanromán’s choice of the formal V did.
I visited four different classes at the University of Barcelona to distribute the surveys: two classes in the Hispanic Philology department and two classes in the Catalan Philology department in order to have an evenly distributed sample of L1 Catalan and Castilian Spanish speakers, even though not all students were studying only Hispanic or Catalan philology. The questionnaire was presented in a traditional pen-and-paper format. Students were given 20 minutes to complete the questionnaire, and the professor and I answered any questions they had.
I coded and entered the data from the questionnaires into SPSS iles for analysis. While the questionnaire allows for many other variables to be examined, I decided to examine the speaker’s productive use of pronominal forms of address with family members and at university only. In order to analyze my data most effectively, I grouped address pronouns: tu or tú only remained T, but tu or tú plus any other form became V. Vostè or usted remained V. Due to the scarcity of participants who used vós in Catalan, I decided to add these results to vostè in order to attain a binary variable, which was much easier to analyze. However, I also analyzed the use of vós separately, as we will see shortly.
The participant sample consisted of 61 students: 80.3% females and 19.7% males. Students were aged between 19 and 27, with a mean age of 21.8 and a median age of 21. I excluded the few students over the age of 27 in order to maintain a more homogenous and comparable sample. Most students studied either Hispanic Philology (42.6%) or Catalan Philology (37.7%), but also 13.1% studied Modern Languages and Literature, and 6.6% studied Linguistics.
Determining a student’s L1 may be a dificult issue in multilingual societies. I identiied students’ L1 in the present study based on their productive language with their parents. If the student either spoke only Catalan to both parents, or Catalan to one parent but mixed languages when speaking to the other parent, the student was given an L1 of Catalan. The same was true in the case of Castilian Spanish (except, of course, the student was given an L1 of Castilian Spanish in this case). Finally, if the student spoke only in Castilian Spanish to one parent and only in Catalan to another, the student was given a bilingual L1. To maintain a more homogenous and comparable population, I excluded any students whose L1 was not Castilian Spanish, Catalan, or both. My results showed that 55.7% spoke Catalan as their L1, 34.4% spoke Castilian Spanish as their L1, and 9.8% had bilingual Catalan-Castilian Spanish L1s.
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As far as language proiciency is concerned, all participants in the present study are Catalan-Spanish bilinguals, as is the norm in Catalonia thanks to its education system, especially among youth (Vila i Moreno, 2008: 172). Indeed, according to participants’ language self-assessment, 100% of students rated themselves as having native proiciency in their L1 and either native or advanced proiciency in the other language. Only one student rated herself as having intermediate proiciency in the other language.
While all informants are bilingual, not all of them use both languages with all interlocutors, as demonstrated in the following igure. Not all informants declared that they used both languages at the university. In Figure 1, I have maintained the same order of interlocutors as appeared in the questionnaire; they were mixed in order to blur the idea of social status when students were answering the questions.
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Figure 1: Languages participants spoke with interlocutors at university: Percentages
As we can see in Figure 1, a much higher percentage of informants indicated that they use Catalan rather than Castilian Spanish with these speciied interlocutors at the university, even though all the students are bilingual and came from two classes in the Hispanic Philology department and two classes in the Catalan Philology department. It must be noted that not all students reported using both languages with these interlocutors. The highest percentage of informants’ Catalan use occurred with other students and librarians, and the highest percentage of informants speaking Castilian Spanish was with librarians and associate professors. Due to a lack of studies examining students’ use of Catalan and Castilian Spanish in the university setting, I cannot compare my results to those of previous studies.
With parents, aunts and uncles, all participants used only T. These results are consistent with previous studies in terms of T/V use with immediate families. In both her 2006 and 2010 studies, Sanromán found that 100% of students used T with their immediate families (except for grandparents), which was also conirmed by Alba de Diego and Sánchez Lobato’s 1980 study in Madrid, Aguado Candanedo’s 1981 study in Bilbao (as cited in Sanromán 2006: section 4.1.1; Sanromán 2010: 741), Pedroviejo Esteruelas’ 2006 study in Valladolid (Pedroviejo Esteruelas, 2006), Curiel’s 2011 study in the Extremadura region (Curiel, 2011: 109) and Molina Martos’ 1988 and 2000 studies in Madrid (Molina Martos, 2002: 105).
The following tables show students’ different T/V/Vós uses with grandparents. Students reported using vós only with grandparents so these are the only tables I could create to show students’ use of vós. I asked students to indicate language and T/V/Vós uses with both maternal and paternal grandparents, instead of just asking about grandparents in general, because of the possibility that some students may speak one language to one
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set of grandparents and another language to the other set, or that students might use one address pronoun with maternal grandparents and a different address pronoun with paternal grandparents. In this manner, my data is more accurate and complete than if I had just asked students about addressing grandparents in general.
Table 1: Language spoken to Maternal Grandparents as compared to T/V/Vós used to address Maternal Grandparents
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Table 2: Language spoken to Paternal Grandparents as compared to T/V/Vós used to address Paternal Grandparents
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As we can see in the above tables, 22 informants reported speaking only Castilian Spanish to their maternal grandparents, and 20 informants indicated using Castilian Spanish with their paternal grandparents. Two students reported speaking both Catalan and Castilian Spanish to their maternal grandparents, and three spoke both languages to their paternal grandparents; all of these speakers used T. The variation in my results, which Sanromán and Curiel saw among Castilian Spanish-speakers in their studies, occured mainly among the students who spoke Catalan to their grandparents in my study. When addressing maternal grandparents, three students, or 9.4%, used vós and one student, or 3.1%, used V. With paternal grandparents, one student, or 3.4%, used vós and one student, again 3.4%, used V. Among students who spoke only Castilian Spanish to maternal and paternal grandparents, only one student indicated using V with paternal grandparents. In her 2010 study, Sanromán found that 96% of respondents in Cádiz used T with grandparents (Sanromán, 2010: 741), while only 79% of students in Santiago addressed their grandparents with T (Sanromán, 2006: 4.1.1). It would be interesting to see whether Sanromán’s different results in Santiago were due to the use of Galician with grandparents. My initial hypothesis, that students would display slightly different patterns in
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their usage of pronominal forms of address when speaking Catalan because of Catalan’s three pronouns of varying levels of formality, was correct in the instance of students’ forms of address with their grandparents. The majority of students still favored T when addressing their grandparents, however.
We will now move to analyzing T/V choices with different interlocutors at the university. Since age is such an important variable, the interlocutors were divided by age in the questionnaire. The following igure breaks down students’ use of Catalan and Castilian Spanish with different interlocutors according to the interlocutors’ age ranges: 25-35, 36-50, and 51-65. Sanromán did not examine the role of age in students’ T/V use with various interlocutors (Sanromán, 2006: Appendix), which was an important oversight since the literature review showed that age is the most important variable in students’ use of prominal address forms, as explained previously.
Figure 2: Use of T forms according to interlocutors and age: Percentages
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While it is very rare for full professors to be 25-35 years old, I included this age bracket to test the signiicance of age. In terms of language, students speaking to younger full professors in Catalan tended to use slightly more informal address pronouns than those who spoke in Castilian Spanish.
Results showed that when participants were speaking Castilian Spanish or Catalan, age was a more important factor than social status; with younger interlocutors, most participants tended to use T. In each category of social status, interlocutors in the oldest age range received more V pronouns than did the younger categories. Likewise, in her 2011 study of university students in the region of Extremadura, Curiel’s results showed that age was most important deciding factor when participants were choosing an address pronoun (Curiel, 2011: 115). Molina Martos (2002: 113) also concluded that age was the most inluential factor in participants’ pronoun choice based on the results from her 1988 and 2000 studies. She even stated that for two people
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meeting each other for the irst time, age alone would indicate which address pronoun each person would use (Molina Martos, 2002: 113). In her 2006 study in Galicia, Sanromán found that 96% of her informants used T with students they were meeting for the irst time (Sanromán, 2006: section 4.2.2), which was not the case with my sample due to the fact that I divided interlocutors into different age brackets. While 100% of my informants used T with student interlocutors aged 25-35, students’ T use was 73.7% when speaking Catalan and 73.2% when speaking Castilian Spanish to interlocutors aged 36-50 and plummeted to 17.5% when speaking Catalan and 30.8% when speaking Castilian Spanish to the oldest interlocutors, aged 51-65. This was the only example I found of a very signiicant difference between students’ use of T and V in Catalan compared to Castilian Spanish with the above interlocutors. This difference could be attributed to the small sample size. It is possible that Sanromán would have obtained similar results if she had separated the interlocutors in her questionnaire into different age categories, as I did.
Despite age being the most inluential factor in the present study and in the literature, social status was also important. With lower-status interlocutors in the lowest age group, such as students, participants unanimously used T; with the youngest higher-status interlocutors such as full professors, fewer participants used T. With intermediate-status interlocutors like information desk assistants and librarians, participants tended to be more evenly divided on their use of T/V with younger assistants, but again, most participants used V more often with older members of these status groups. The largest difference in T and V use between Castilian Spanish and Catalan in my study was with older lower-status interlocutors like students: participants indicated using T only in 17.5% of cases when speaking Catalan, but in 30.8% of cases when speaking Castilian Spanish. Otherwise, trends in Catalan were generally comparable to trends in Castilian Spanish.
This pilot study investigated students’ use of pronominal forms of address with interlocutors of different social statuses and age groups when speaking Catalan vs. when speaking Castilian Spanish. The results of this study revealed that (a) the students’ T/V trends in Castilian Spanish were very similar to those from previous research; and (b) the trends in Catalan were very similar to those in Castilian Spanish. In terms of comparing my results to Sanromán’s 2006 and 2010 results, I found that the general trends were similar to mine, but the fact that I took age into account quite likely led to the variance according to interlocutors’ age that I found in my study. My results suggested that age was a more inluential variable than status, as I had originally hypothesized, but further research would be necessary to conirm this conclusion.
Even though there are three pronouns of varying levels of formality in the Catalan language, most participants did not utilize all three, as I had originally hypothesized. Surprisingly, while no students indicated using vós with interlocutors at the university, several students did report using vós and even V with their grandparents. According to the literature, fewer students should have used vós than V, but my results showed the opposite trend. A possible reason for this difference could be the small sample size since the literature review indicated that young people see vós as more formal and distant than vostè, so they prefer to use the latter (Nogué 2008: 226). More research would be necessary to investigate whether a signiicant number of students use vós instead of V with grandparents.
The results from the present study relected other concepts that we saw in the literature review, such as the role of politeness in social indexing: the speaker’s address pronoun choice demonstrated the status of his or her social relationship with the interlocutor (Kasper, 1990; Brown & Gilman, 1960). Participants perceived the difference in their own age and that of their interlocutor, followed by the interlocutor’s social status as compared to their own, as indicators of the formality of address that they should use with the interlocutor.
Bearing in mind that more than half of the L1 Catalan participants did not use Castilian Spanish with certain interlocutors, and a few of the L1 Castilian Spanish participants did not report using Catalan with certain interlocutors, results showed that participants’ address pronoun choices were still similar. This suggests that a process of linguistic convergence between Catalan and Castilian Spanish may be taking place, even though their speakers are not always shared. Vós is generally used less in Catalan today, as explained in the literature review (Nogué, 2008: 226; Vilà Comajoan, 2001: 96; Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2010 [2002]: 128; Olmo, 2012: 146) and as seen in students’ pronoun use with interlocutors at the university in the present
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study. This may be signaled as an example of linguistic convergence between Catalan and Castilian Spanish in Barcelona: after almost 100 years of Catalans learning Castilian Spanish and mixing with Catalan, and Spanish-speaking immigrants learning Catalan and mixing with Spanish, the pragmatic systems of both languages seem to be becoming more and more similar.
This study should be regarded for scientiic purposes as a pilot study because I created the questionnaire used in this study and it has not been tested in any other studies. This means that the results I obtained from the questionnaire cannot be compared to results from other studies that have also used the questionnaire. Likewise, my results cannot be generalized. Possible limitations of the study include the following: I did not take a random sample of students in Barcelona, but used intact classes in the philology departments of UB, and therefore my results cannot be generalized to speak for all students at UB or in Barcelona; I analyzed only several variables of the many possible variables that could have been considered, including students’ responses to open-ended questions; I relied on students’ self-reports to ascertain their L1 and proiciency in Catalan and Castilian Spanish (if not their L1); and I used only a questionnaire to determine students’ T and V use. Future studies could examine audio and/or audiovisual recordings of students’ natural speech with the speciic interlocutors at the university to record data from real-life situations. Future studies could also analyze the variable of proximity, explore the relationship between all three variables (age, social status, and proximity), look into T/V use in the workplace, and investigate correlations between T/V use and L1, sex, studies, and participants’ receptive and productive language use.
AGUADO CANDANEDO, David. (1981). «Análisis sociolingüístico del uso de tú/usted en los estudiantes universitarios de Bilbao». Letras de Deusto, 21, 165-184 as cited in Sanromán, Begoña. (2006). Las formas de tratamiento en el español peninsular actual: los estudiantes de dos poblaciones gallegas. Retrieved from http://rudar.ruc.dk/bitstream/1800/8460/1/Artikel78.pdf
ALBA DE DIEGO, Vidal; SÁNCHEZ LOBATO, Jesús. (1980). «Tratamiento y juventud en la lengua hablada. Aspectos sociolingüísticos». Boletín de la Real Academia de la Lengua, 60, 95-130 as cited in Sanromán, Begoña. (2006). «Las formas de tratamiento en el español peninsular actual: los estudiantes de dos poblaciones gallegas». Retrieved from http://rudar.ruc.dk/bitstream/1800/8460/1/Artikel78.pdf
BLAS ARROYO, José Luis. (1995). «Un ejercicio de sociolingüística interaccional: el caso de los pronombres de tratamiento en el español actual». Verba, 22, 229-252. Retrieved from http://dspace.usc.es/ bitstream/10347/3249/1/pg_231-254_verba22.pdf
BOIX, Emili. (2006). Corpus de varietats socials: materials de treball (Vol. 26). Barcelona: Edicions Universitat Barcelona, 10-11.
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BORREGO NIETO, Julio; GÓMEZ ASENSIO, José; PÉREZ BOWIE, José. (1978). «Sobre el tú y el usted». Studia Philologica Salmanticiensa, 2, 53-67. Retrieved from http://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/6380/1/ ELUA_10_02.pdf
BROWN, Roger; GILMAN, Albert. (1960). «The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity». In T. A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language, MIT Press, 253-76. DOI (Chapter): 10.1515/9783110805376.252 Retrieved from http://mapageweb.umontreal.ca/tuitekj/cours/2611pdf/Brown-Gilman-Pronouns.pdf
BROWN, Penelope; LEVINSON, Stephen. (1987). «Politeness: Some universals in language usage». Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1525/ae.1988.15.4.02a00420 as cited in Kasper, G. (1990). Linguistic politeness: Current research issues. Journal of Pragmatics, 14(2), 193-218. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(90)90080-W
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CALDERÓN, Miguel. (2010). «Formas de tratamiento». Aleza Izquierdo, M.; Enguita Utrilla, JM (coords.): El español en América: normas y usos actuales. Valencia: Universitat de Valencia, 225-236. Retrieved from http://www.uv.es/aleza/Cap.%204.%20EA%20Formas%20tratamiento.pdf
CARRASCO SANTANA, Antonio. (2002). Los tratamientos en español. Salamanca: Ediciones Colegio de España. As cited in Sanromán, B. (2010). El uso del" tú" y" usted" en los jóvenes de Cádiz. In Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico, 735-754. El Colegio de México.
CARRICABURO, Norma. (1997). Las fórmulas de tratamiento en el español actual. Arco Libros. Retrieved from http://www.auburn.edu/academic/liberal_arts/foreign/Spanish/FLSP7970t/Carricaburo-Formulas.pdf
COROMINES, Joan. (1971). Lleures i converses d’un ilòleg (Vol. 2, p. 90), Club editor, as cited in Todolí Cervera, J. (1998). Els pronoms personals. Valencia: Universitat de Valencia, 33.
INSTITUT D’ESTUDIS CATALANS. (2007). Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, 2nd Edition. Electronic Version. Retrieved from http://dlc.iec.cat
INSTITUT D’ESTUDIS CATALANS. (2010 [2002]). Gramàtica de la llengua catalana, 128-129. Electronic Version. Accessed at http://www.iecat.net/Institucio/seccions/Filologica/gramatica/default.asp
KASPER, Gabriele. (1990). «Linguistic politeness: Current research issues». Journal of Pragmatics, 14(2), 193-218. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(90)90080-W
KOCHMAN, Thomas. (1984). «The politics of politeness: Social warrants in mainstream American public etiquette». In: Deborah Schiffrin, ed., Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, 200-209 as cited in Kasper, G. (1990). Linguistic politeness: Current research issues. Journal of Pragmatics, 14(2), 193-218. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(90)90080-W
LAKOFF, Robin. (1973). «The logic of politeness, or minding your p’s and q’s». Chicago Linguistics Society, 9, 305. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/411994?uid=3737952 &uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104367086703
MOLINA MARTOS, Isabel. (1993). «Fórmulas de tratamiento de los jóvenes madrileños. Estudio sociolingüístico». Lingüística Española Actual, (15)2, 249-263 as cited in Sanromán, B. (2006). Las formas de tratamiento en el español peninsular actual: los estudiantes de dos poblaciones gallegas. Retrieved from http://rudar.ruc.dk/ bitstream/1800/8460/1/Artikel78.pdf
MOLINA MARTOS, Isabel. (2002). «Evolución de las fórmulas de tratamiento en la juventud madrileña a lo largo del siglo XX: un estudio en tiempo real». In Rodríguez, F. (Coord.). (2002). El lenguaje de los jóvenes, 97-122. Ariel.
MORENO, María Cristobalina. (2002). «The address system in the Spanish of the Golden Age». Journal of Pragmatics, 34(1), 15-47. DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00074-6
MORENO, María Cristobalina. (2003). «El uso del pronombre tú en la España contemporánea: ¿Extensión de un nuevo uso o continuación de una tendencia iniciada en el Siglo de Oro?» In Actes du Colloque International de Pronoms de deuxieme personne et formes d’addresse dans les langues d’Europe. Retrieved from http:// cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/coloquio_paris/ponencias/pdf/cvc_moreno.pdf
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REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA. (2007). Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd edition. Electronic Version. Retrieved from http://www.rae.es/recursos/diccionarios/drae
SANROMÁN, Begoña. (2006). Las formas de tratamiento en el español peninsular actual: los estudiantes de dos poblaciones gallegas. Retrieved from http://rudar.ruc.dk/bitstream/1800/8460/1/Artikel78.pdf
SANROMÁN, Begoña. (2010). «El uso del "tú" y "usted" en los jóvenes de Cádiz». In Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico, 735-754. El Colegio de México.
STEWART, Miranda. (1999). The Spanish language today. Psychology Press. Retrieved from http:// worldtracker.org/media/library/Language%20Learning/18.Spanish,%20Catalan%20and%20Basque/45. The%20Spanish%20Language%20Today.pdf
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VILÀ COMAJOAN, Carme. (2001). La llengua catalana com a sistema (Vol. 52). Barcelona: Editorial UOC.
VILA I MORENO, F. Xavier. (2004). «El català i el castellà a començament del mil?lenni a Catalunya: Condicionants i tendencies». In Payrató, L. and Vila, F.X. (Eds.). (2004). Les llengües a Catalunya, 29-51.
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G. Extra and D. Gorter. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 157-183.
WHEELER, Max Woodield. (1988). 5 Catalan. The Romance Languages, 170. Retrieved from http:// books.google.es/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XZAMHDbMtwIC&oi=fnd&pg=PR6&dq=wheeler+5 +Catalan.+The+Romance+Languages&ots=j5urxNfKI_&sig=e6ZczTYe2FwHUuFSkuDkg56L BEY#v=onepage&q=wheeler%205%20Catalan.%20The%20Romance%20Languages&f=false
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QÜESTIONARI DE TRACTAMENT PERSONAL
El següent qüestionari tracta sobre l’ús de "tu" i "vostè" en català i castellà, tema d’estudi d’un treball inal del Màster de Lingüística Aplicada de la Universitat de Barcelona.
Completar el qüestionari et portarà al voltant de 15-20 minuts. No has de respondre totes les preguntes. Els qüestionaris són anònims i només seran usats per al propòsit mencionat anteriorment.
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I USOS EN FAMÍLIA
Marca la resposta adequada. Si cal, pots marcar més d’una opció o no marcar-ne cap, segons sigui el cas.
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II A LA UNIVERSITAT
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A) A la teva vida universitària, quina forma utilitzes al parlar per primera vegada amb algú EN CATALÀ? (si no utilitzes el català en aquests contextos, passa a l’apartat B de la pregunta)
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B) A la teva vida universitària, quina forma utilitzes al parlar per primera vegada amb algú EN
CASTELLÀ? (si no utilitzes el castellà en aquests contextos, passa a l’apartat C de la pregunta)
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C) A la teva vida universitària, quina forma utilitzes quan ja fa temps que us coneixeu, parlant EN CATALÀ? (Si no utilitzes el català en aquests contextos, passa a l’apartat D de la pregunta)
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D) A la teva vida universitària, quina forma utilitzes quan ja fa temps que us coneixeu, parlant EN CASTELLÀ? (Si no utilitzes el castellà en aquests contextos, passa a la pregunta 36)
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III USOS EN EL LLOC DE TREBALL
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Marca la resposta adequada: Tu/Tú o Vostè/Usted. Si la pregunta no et concerneix (per exemple, si no treballes), no responguis res. Si és necessari, pots marcar les dues o les tres opcions (tú/tu, vostè/usted, i vós/vos).
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IV EN GENERAL
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CUESTIONARIO DE TRATAMIENTO PERSONAL
El siguiente cuestionario trata sobre el uso de "tú" y "usted" en catalán y castellano, tema de estudio para un trabajo de in de Máster en Lingüística Aplicada en la Universitat de Barcelona.
Completarlo lleva alrededor de 15-20 minutos. No tienes porqué responder todas las cuestiones. Los cuestionarios tienen carácter anónimo y serán usados únicamente para este propósito.
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I USOS EN FAMILIA
Marca la respuesta adecuada. Puedes marcar más de una opción si es necesario, o nada según el caso.
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V EN LA UNIVERSIDAD
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A) En tu vida universitaria, ¿qué forma utilizas normalmente con los siguientes interlocutores al hablarse por primera vez EN CATALÁN? (Si no usas el catalán en estos contextos, pasa a la tabla B)
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B) En tu vida universitaria, ¿qué forma utilizas normalmente con los siguientes interlocutores al hablarse por primera vez EN CASTELLANO? (Si no usas el castellano en estos contextos, pasa a la tabla C)
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C) En tu vida universitaria, ¿qué forma utilizas normalmente con los siguientes interlocutores cuando ya hace tiempo que os conocéis, hablando EN CATALÁN? (Si no usas el catalán en estos contextos, pasa a la tabla D)
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D) En tu vida universitaria, ¿qué forma utilizas normalmente con los siguientes interlocutores cuando ya hace tiempo que os conocéis, hablando EN CASTELLANO? (Si no usas el castellano en estos contextos, pasa a la pregunta 36)
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VI USOS EN EL LUGAR DE TRABAJO
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Marca la respuesta adecuada: Tú o Usted. Si la pregunta no te concierne (por ejemplo, si no trabajas), no respondas nada. Si es necesario puedes marcar los dos o tres (tú/tu, vostè/usted, y vós).
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VII EN GENERAL
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[1] I would like to express my sincere thanks to Prof. F. Xavier Vila for his continuous guidance, support, and encouragement throughout this process. I would also like to thank my 61 participants, and Prof. Vila and Prof. Estrella Montolío, for allowing me to administer the questionnaires during class time.
[2] "Frente a usted, tú... implica acercamiento al interlocutor y se usa en contextos familiares, informales o de conianza" (Real Academia Española, 2005)
[3] "Forma de 2.ª persona usada por tú como tratamiento de cortesía, respeto o distanciamiento" (Real Academia Española, 2007)
[4] "El tuteo en España, es hoy en día, la norma, y, por tanto, se da no sólo en las relaciones familiares y de amistad [...] sino que se ha extendido a otras relaciones en las que el grado de conocimiento de los interlocutores no es alto, en las que no existen lazos socioafectivos, y en las que, incluso, la situación comunicativa podría caliicarse como formal" (Carrasco Santana, 2002: 41 as cited in Sanromán, 2010: 738).
[5] "Respecte amistós" (Coromines, 1971: 90 as cited in Todolí Cervera, 1998: 33).
