The Social Meaning of Variable Polite LEÍSMO in Mexico City

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Departments of Linguistics and Spanish & Portuguese, 2020Language is intricately complex and powerful. Even the smallest words, like the le pronoun in Spanish, are capable of meaning so much beyond their dictionary definition. This specific pronoun, roughly meaning a formal ‘you’, is found at the intersection of language, context, and society, with implications for understanding language and culture under the broader perspective of human behavior. This dissertation is the first variationist sociolinguistic study with experimental pragmatic component exploring the variable polite leísmo phenomenon in Spanish, focusing on the linguistic treatment of our various socially distant interlocutors. Furthermore, it is the first study to look at the production and perception of polite leísmo in interactive settings in search for its social meaning and value in Mexico City. Due to the complex implications of the variation found with this pronoun as direct object (Aijón Oliva, 2006; Parodi, Luna & Helmer, 2012; RAE 2010), the study makes use of complementary theoretical and methodological approaches common to the areas of morphosyntax, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. The multivariate conditioning of polite leísmo is statistically uncovered through carefully designed production and perception methods: 107 interactive role plays with diverse residents of Mexico City and 92 reports on contextualized perceptual acceptability of this linguistic variation. Despite its relatively rare use (17%), polite leísmo is commonly perceived as acceptable (56%). It illustrates subtle morphosyntactic ambiguities capable of serving as multifunctional (face-enhancing and mitigating) politeness and social mobility projection tools. This is possible due to the multiple linguistic, contextual, and social factors that simultaneously condition its use and acceptability. Polite leísmo, then, is a half-conscious endeavor to reflect, reinforce, and redefine social relationships and the speaker’s identity within a community by softly signaling speaker’s background (predominantly female educated immigrants), intention (mitigate an imposition and enhance the interlocutor’s image), power dynamics (especially in subordinate positions), and strategic communication (offer and negotiate) through day-to-day speech acts