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The Social Meaning of Variable Polite Leísmo in Mexico City

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The Social Meaning of Variable Polite Leísmo in Mexico City THE SOCIAL MEANING OF VARIABLE POLITE LEÍSMO IN MEXICO CITY Valentyna Filimonova Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Departments of Linguistics and Spanish & Portuguese, Indiana University November 2020 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Doctoral Committee ______________________________________ Committee Co-chairperson: Manuel Díaz-Campos, PhD ______________________________________ Committee Co-chairperson: Joseph Clancy Clements, PhD ______________________________________ César Félix-Brasdefer, PhD ______________________________________ Julie Auger, PhD ______________________________________ Tania Leal, PhD Date of Defense: August 28, 2020 ii Valentyna Filimonova THE SOCIAL MEANING OF VARIABLE POLITE LEÍSMO IN MEXICO CITY Language 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. ______________________________________ Committee Co-chairperson: Manuel Díaz-Campos, PhD ______________________________________ Committee Co-chairperson: Joseph Clancy Clements, PhD ______________________________________ César Félix-Brasdefer, PhD ______________________________________ Julie Auger, PhD ______________________________________ Tania Leal, PhD iii Table of Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 1 2. Perspectives on Polite Leísmo............................................................................................................... 10 2.1 Global Perspective on Polite Leísmo: Big-Picture Motivation .................................................... 10 2.1.1 Culture and Ways of Viewing the World .................................................................................. 11 2.1.2 Mexico City as a Microcosm of Mexico ................................................................................... 21 2.1.3 Interfacing with the Global Perspective: Global Issues, Inequalities, and Broader Impacts 38 2.2 Sociolinguistic Perspective on Polite Leísmo ................................................................................. 43 2.2.1 Diachronic Complexity: The Historical Context of Leísmo .................................................... 44 2.2.2 Sociolinguistic Approaches to Synchronic Complexity ........................................................... 47 2.2.3 Social Meaning and Social Value of Variable Linguistic Phenomena ................................... 56 2.2.4 Interfacing with the Sociolinguistic Perspective: Diaphasic Stratification ............................ 68 2.3 Pragmatic Perspective on Polite Leísmo ....................................................................................... 70 2.3.1 Variational Pragmatics ............................................................................................................. 71 2.3.2 Meaning in Interaction ............................................................................................................. 75 2.3.3 Communicative and Politeness Functions ............................................................................... 82 2.3.4 Context: Social and Contextual Factors .................................................................................. 90 2.3.5 Interfacing with the Pragmatic Perspective: Social Deixis and Deictic Relationships .......... 96 2.4 Morphosyntactic Perspective on Social Deixis and Polite Leísmo ............................................ 104 2.4.1 Morphosyntactic Relationships between Form and Meaning ............................................... 105 2.4.2 Morphosyntactic Properties of Polite Leísmo ........................................................................ 113 2.4.3 Seeming Leísmo ...................................................................................................................... 116 2.4.4 Interfacing with the Morphosyntactic Perspective: Theoretical Frameworks for Syntax- Pragmatics Interface ........................................................................................................................ 121 3. Research Objective and Research Questions ................................................................................... 130 4. Methodology ........................................................................................................................................ 132 4.1 Participants and Their Data ......................................................................................................... 132 4.1.1 Corpus Description: Social Stratification of Production and Perception Study Samples .... 134 4.1.2 Data.......................................................................................................................................... 137 4.2 Procedure ....................................................................................................................................... 140 4.3 Instrument Design ......................................................................................................................... 142 4.3.1 Instrument Selection Justification ......................................................................................... 143 4.3.2 Situational Context Design ..................................................................................................... 145 4.3.3 Constants ................................................................................................................................. 153 iv 4.3.4 Potential Factors ..................................................................................................................... 161 4.4 Summary of constants and variables (controlled, by design, and dynamic) ........................... 164 5. Analysis of Independent Variables .................................................................................................... 168 5.1 Social Variables ............................................................................................................................. 171 5.1.1 Social Participant Variables ................................................................................................... 172 5.1.2 Interlocutor Variables ............................................................................................................. 186 5.2 Contextual Variables .................................................................................................................... 187 5.2.1 Social Domain ......................................................................................................................... 189 5.2.2 Speech Event ........................................................................................................................... 190 5.2.3 Power ....................................................................................................................................... 192 5.2.4 (Ir)realis Mood ........................................................................................................................ 194 5.3 Linguistic Variables .....................................................................................................................
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