La distancia social y su relación con la cortesía lingüística en el español : Un estudio sobre hablantes andaluces

This thesis examines how social distance in terms of different relationships affects the usage of linguistic resources, with a focus on the Spanish region Andalusia. The aim is to investigate how relationships between different interlocutors affect language, and particularly what different strategies of politeness are being used, and how these differ regarding each interlocutor presented. For the investigation, there are two main types of speech acts used: invitation and request. 30 native and residential Andalusians have participated in the investigation and answered a survey concerning several social situations. The results show that indirect types of politeness strategies are in general more produced when the social distance is extensive. Furthermore, the results of the investigation indicate that politeness strategies can also differ between interlocutors that do not reflect an exceeding social distance. The results presented in this thesis contribute to the research field of sociolinguistics with focus on how social distance affect the usage of politeness in the Andalusian region, which will be useful for making comparisons between different regions in the Spanish speaking world