In life you have to fight to move on”. Discourse-pragmatic and sociolinguistic variation of the non-deictic second person singular uses in Chilean Spanish

Abstract

An analysis of the non-deictic second person singular uses in Chilean Spanish is presented in this paper. The dataset is made of semi-spontaneous speech, specifically, sociolinguistic interviews, from which an exploratory corpus was extracted. In this context, the main goal of the research is to analyse the non-deictic 2nd person singular uses according to stylistic aspects through a new proposal of discourse-pragmatic categories which are related with linguistic and extralinguistic variables. Specifically, four categories are distinguished: a) generalization, b) focused generalization, c) inclusive defocalization and d) self-disguising. This classification is then correlated with the factors of forms of address and sex. Results regarding the sociolin-guistic and morphosyntactic variables demonstrate that men present higher frequencies of use of the non-deictic strategies, specifically with voseo verb forms, while women tend to em-ploy this device with tuteo. As for the categories, non-deictic usage is especially high through generalization and focused generalization, as strategies associated with a potential effect of empathy towards the interlocutor, especially in those cases where voseo is employed. In this sense, each of the categories proposed represents a specific discourse-pragmatic strategy at a stylistic variation level, which is regarded not only by the degree of formality, but also as a linguistic choice within the speakers’ repertoire.