The pronominal forms of treatment in Mateare, Managua: linguistic uses and attitudes

Abstract

It is well known that pronominal forms of treatment vary according to the places where they are used. Nicaragua is considered fully use of the first person pronoun vos, however, the use of the pronoun vos occurs according to the symmetric and asymmetric parameters established by Brown and Gilman (1960). This research deals with the forms of pronominal treatment vos, tú and usted used by the inhabitants in the neighborhood of José Benito Escobar in the municipality of Mateare, department of Managua, whose purpose is to dialectologically analyze the treatment in both symmetric, asymmetric and distancing relationships, also in pragmatic situations. In the same way, the treatment was studied from the perspective of the linguistic attitudes associated with these pronouns of the second person singular. For this, surveys were applied to a total of 24 informants. Among the most relevant results, we highlighted the age as a determining factor in deciding the treatment of the interlocutor, since if this is less than the sender, it is most likely that it will be treated as vos, but if it is older it will be treated as usted.  Another important conclusion is that usted is the dominant treatment when you have just met a person, but as trust grows, the chances of a pronoun change in support of vos. Furthermore, this investigation confirmed that the use of tú continues to be practically non-existent in Nicaragua, mainly in the spoken language.