In:Beyond Binaries in Address Research: Politeness and identity practices in interaction
Edited by Víctor Fernández-Mallat and María Irene Moyna
[Topics in Address Research 6] 2025
► pp. 242–262
Chapter 11“No se puede ser más tonto”
Referential inference and address strategies in comments to Spanish digital news
Published online: 17 July 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/tar.6.11aij
https://doi.org/10.1075/tar.6.11aij
Abstract
The study aims to expand the analysis of address in Spanish as part of broader strategies to conceptualize the
participants through grammatical choice. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of these strategies is based on a corpus of
comments to digital news items. Together with the tú (T) and usted (V) grammatical paradigms
and their plurals, other possibilities are considered whereby discourse viewpoint is displaced from the specific addressee.
While second person forms are the most usual choices to address other commenters, addressee-defocusing constructions often
appear in connection with other kinds of intended addressees, most significantly public institutions. It is concluded that the
inherent meanings of grammatical constructions are related to their possible referential interpretations and their
distributions across texts.
Keywords: Spanish, reference, viewpoint, defocusing, digital discourse
Article outline
- 1.Introduction and theoretical framework
- 1.1Not just T and V: Beyond binary approaches to address
- 1.2Research questions and outline of the study
- 2.Corpus and methodology
- 3.The uses of prototypical and displaced second persons
- 4.Indirect address strategies
- 4.1The coding of addressees as third persons
- 4.2Non-phoric plural third persons
- 4.3Passive and impersonal constructions with se
- 4.4The impersonal deontic construction haber que + infinitive
- 5.Quantitative distribution of address strategies
- 6.Conclusions and prospects
Notes References
References (37)
Aijón Oliva, Miguel A. 2018. Not just you: The
construction of radio audiences through second-person choice in Peninsular
Spanish. Language &
Communication 60. 80–93.
Aijón Oliva, Miguel A. 2019. Constructing us: The first and
second persons in Spanish media
discourse. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Aijón Oliva, Miguel A. 2020. It can be us or you. The
desubjectification of viewpoint through person choice in Spanish oral and written media
discourse. Journal of
Pragmatics 163. 4–17.
2022. Grammatical coding and
the discursive construction of participants: Spanish passives in written press news
discourse. Transactions of the Philological
Society 120. 351–374.
Bou-Franch, Patricia & Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich. 2014. Conflict
management in massive polylogues: A case study from YouTube. Journal of
Pragmatics 73. 19–36.
Cepeda Ruiz, Cristal Yeseidy. 2019. Algunos aspectos
sobre el ustedeo bogotano. Signos
Lingüísticos 15. 42–69.
De Cock, Barbara. 2014. Profiling
discourse participants: Forms and functions in Spanish conversation and
debates. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Delbecque, Nicole. 2014. Passive
voice and causal roles in Spanish. In Nicole Delbecque, Karen Lahousse & Willy van Langendonck (eds.), Nuclear and
non-nuclear
cases, 217–318. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fábregas, Antonio. 2021. Se
in Spanish: Properties, structures, analyses. Borealis: An International Journal of
Hispanic
Linguistics 10. 1–235.
Fernández-Mallat, Víctor. 2020. Forms
of address in interaction: Evidence from Chilean Spanish. Journal of
Pragmatics 161. 95–106.
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar. 2010. A
genre approach to the study of im-politeness. International Review of
Pragmatics 2. 46–94.
García, Erica C. 2009. The motivated syntax of
arbitrary signs: Cognitive constraints on Spanish clitic
clustering. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
García Yanes, Francisco Javier. 2022. Force dynamics as
the path to the Spanish subjunctive. Cognitive
Linguistics 33. 767–800.
Gast, Volker, Lisa Deringer, Florian Haas & Olga Rudolf. 2015. Impersonal
uses of the second person singular: A pragmatic analysis of generalization and empathy
effects. Journal of
Pragmatics 88. 176–189.
Gili Gaya, Samuel. 1980
[1943]. Curso superior de sintaxis española (13th
edn.). Barcelona: Biblograf.
Goldberg, Adele E. 2006. Constructions at work: The
nature of generalization in
language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Helincks, Kris. 2015. Negotiation
of terms of address in a Chilean television talk show. Bulletin of Hispanic
Studies 92. 731–752.
Ilbury, Christian. 2019. “Sassy
Queens”: Stylistic orthographic variation in Twitter and the enregisterment of
AAVE. Journal of
Sociolinguistics 24. 245–264.
Jang, Ji Son. 2012. Cambio pronominal
momentáneo en las relaciones interpersonales solidarias en los jóvenes universitarios de Medellín
(Colombia). In Julio Escamilla Morales & Grandfield Henry Vega (eds.), Miradas
multidisciplinares a los fenómenos de cortesía y descortesía en el mundo
hispánico, 178–212. Barranquilla: Universidad del Atlántico/Programa EDICE.
Langacker, Ronald W. 2008. Cognitive grammar: A basic
introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Meulleman, Machteld & Eugeen Roegiest. 2012. Los
locativos en la valencia de la construcción existencial española: ¿Actante o
circunstante? Zeitschrift für Romanische
Philologie 128. 57–70.
Posio, Pekka. 2015. Alcance
referencial y variabilidad de las construcciones impersonales con referencia humana en español peninsular hablado:
Se y la tercera persona del plural. Spanish in
Context 12. 373–395.
RAE 2009 = Real Academia Española & Asociación de Academias de la Lengua
Española. 2009. Nueva gramática de la lengua
española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Raymond, Chase Wesley. 2016. Reconceptualizing
identity and context in the deployment of forms of
address. In María Irene Moyna & Susana V. Rivera-Mills (eds.), Forms
of address in the Spanish of the
Americas, 267–288. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Sánchez López, Cristina. 2002. Las
construcciones con se: Estado de la
cuestión. In Cristina Sánchez López (ed.), Las
construcciones con
se, 13–163. Madrid: Visor Libros.
. 2016. Pasividad
e impersonalidad. In Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach (ed.), Enciclopedia
de Lingüística
Hispánica, 773–784. London: Routledge.
Scott, Kate. 2020. Referring
expressions, pragmatics, and
style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Serrano, María José. 2017. Going beyond address
forms: Variation and style in the use of the second-person pronouns tú and
usted. Pragmatics 27. 87–115.
Serrano, María José. 2018. Análisis
cognitivo-discursivo y situacional de las formas de tratamiento en función de sujeto y de objeto en
español. Spanish in
Context 15. 103–126.
Serrano, María José. 2020. La textualización de
la desubjetivización: Variación entre la perífrasis haber que + infinitivo y el clítico
se. Oralia 23. 131–164.
Serrano, María José. 2022. Defocusing and the
third-person viewpoint: The pronoun uno and its covariation with clitic se in
Spanish. Lingua 280. 1–22.
Siewierska, Anna. 2008. Ways
of impersonalizing: Pronominal vs verbal strategies. In María de los Ángeles Gómez González, J. Lachlan Mackenzie & Elsa M. González Álvarez (eds.), Current
trends in contrastive linguistics: Functional and cognitive
perspectives, 3–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Siewierska, Anna & Maria Papastathi. 2011. Towards
a typology of third person plural
impersonals. Linguistics 49. 575–610.
Truan, Naomi. 2021. The
politics of person reference. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.