Discourse objectivization, social variation and style of Spanish second-person singular tú

Resumen

This investigation aims to uncover the variation of the Spanish second-person singular subject pronoun tú ‘you.sg’ when it displaces its content away from the particular circumstances of the speaker and changes its deictic meaning to a resource for the objectivization of the utterance. The multiple repercussions of the formal variation (expression and omission) of this subject on internal and external levels of meaning will be explored. Essential to understanding this case of variation is the consideration of prominent features of the communicative situation, as well as the social identities and roles assumed by the speakers within it (including professional affiliation, transactional vs. interpersonal communicative stance and gender). The results of the analysis allow us to sketch basic interactional and discursive tendencies governing objectivizing uses of the second-person singular tú along the oral-written continuum.