Formas y formulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispanico

Direct face-to-face communication is essentially characterized by the employment of social deixis, most prominently, of personal pronouns. In Spanish, interactants have to choose between several address terms, such as t, usted, vos or plural vosotros/as and ustedes on the pronominal level, plus other honorific terms, marking degrees of familiarity and/or formality. Also, the Spanish-speaking world is known for its marked differences according to geographic and social origin of the speakers, and gives ample document to profound social changes during the last 30-50 years. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest, from very different theoretical perspectives, to the study of Spanish terms of address, which this volume seeks to document. It is based on a conference in Graz, Austria, in May 2006, but not a conference volume in the strict sense, since the editors invited other researchers to join the volume and give state of the art accounts on a large variety of topics. Consequently, this book offers a thorough discussion of topics, encompassing methodology, different regions and states, historical and/or diachronic analyses, diatopic questions, sociolinguistic and pragmatic analyses. The authors of the 42 chapters of this volume are well- known experts in the field of knowledge presented.