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Article published In: Language, Culture and Society
Vol. 6:2 (2024) ► pp.223–249

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The variation of the indefinite pronoun uno as a desubjectivizing resource by sex/gender

 | Universidad de La Laguna
Published online: 18 February 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.24029.ser
Abstract
In Spanish, uno (‘one’) is third person pronoun whose referent is categorically a first-person singular referent of human nature: “Uno quiere salir adelante” (‘One wants to go onwards’). It represents the person speaking, but a second person or a nonspecified group of referents may also be included in the reference. Speakers refer to themselves by using this pronoun, but at the same time, they intend to give a universal reading to the content. The use of uno (‘one’) promotes a desubjectivizing style of discourse suited to achieve certain concrete communicative goals. Desubjectivization is a cognitive process based on the gradual cognitive salience or accessibility of personal referents. In this investigation, uno (‘one’) is analyzed as a desubjectivizing resource by observing its use across sex/gender factors. Sex/gender will be approached as a covariating factor with the use of the pronoun uno, considering that it is a grammatical choice that will contribute to the construction of a communicative style. Two pragmatic referential readings of uno were isolated and their analysis was performed in a corpus of social media texts (Facebook, X and Instagram). Results reveal that men tend to create a more desubjectivizing style according to their frequency of using unevenly both readings of uno in all and social media text. In turn, women showed an increasing percentage of just one of the uno’s reading on the social media X, thus, women tend to create a less desubjectivizing style than men.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction. The pronoun uno as a desubjectivizing resource
  • 2.Sex/gender as a covariating sociolinguistic factor and the creation of communicative styles
  • 3.Methodology and corpus
  • 4.Sociocommunicative analysis
    • 4.1Distribution of uno/una across social media texts
    • 4.2The distribution by sex/gender
    • 4.3The discursive-pragmatic nuances of uno and its distribution by sex/gender
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
References (56)
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