Vos and tú in the linguistic landscape

Although vos is common in speech in Medellín, it is considered non-prestigious for writing (Agudelo Montoya et al. 2016Agudelo Montoya, Claudia Liliana, Gladys Yolanda Pasuy Guerrero, Octavio Escobar Giraldo, and José Fernando Ramírez Osorio. 2016. “Actitudes lingüísticas de los profesores de lenguas de la Universidad de Caldas respecto al voseo.” Revista de Investigaciones UCM 16 (27): 16–28. ). Nonetheless, vos is an important marker of local identity (Jang 2013Jang, Ji Son. 2013. “Voseo medellinense como expresión de identidad paisa.” Íkala 18 (1): 61–81.) that increasingly appears in writing (Weyers 2016aWeyers, Joseph R. 2016a. “Making the Case for Increased Prestige of the Vernacular: Medellín’s Voseo.” In Forms of Address in the Spanish-Speaking World, ed. by María Irene Moyna and Susana Rivera, 287–302. New York: John Benjamins. ). Its presence suggests a potential upward shift in its prestige. For that to happen, favorable attitudes toward its use in writing are called for. Here we examine the linguistic attitudes of 222 medellinenses toward vos, tú, and their corresponding verb forms in advertising. We find that (1) all speakers prefer vos; (2) they favor the pronoun vos over its corresponding verb forms; (3) younger speakers prefer vos over their older counterparts; and (4) men prefer voseo verb forms while women prefer tuteo forms. Given the overall positive attitudes toward vos, it is possible that its prestige will increase.