Prescriptive and descriptive norms in second person singular forms of address in Argentinean Spanish

: In this chapter, we analyze and compare the use of second person singular terms of address ( vos / usted / tú ) in Argentinean mass-consumption audiovisual and printed texts from two different periods (1960 and 2015). Using the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive norms (axiological and objective in Blanco 2000), we show that the paradigm of the former has changed over the last fifty years and now overlaps with the latter. However, there is still a gap between both norms: the use of tú / contigo and the voseo reforzado (“double” voseo ) in present subjunctive. We propose an explanation for both phenomena in terms of social proximity and symbolic identity.


Introduction
Considered a vulgar form of address throughout Hispanic America during the 19th and early 20th centuries, the use of second person singular pronoun vos (voseo in Spanish) was criticized by advocates promoting normalization -standardization throughout Spanish-speaking areas -who favored the use of second person singular pronoun tú (tuteo in Spanish) over vos. This position has been supported by well-known authors, such as Andrés Bello, who claimed: El vos de que se hace tanto uso en Chile en el diálogo familiar, es una vulgaridad que debe evitarse, y el construirlo con el singular de los verbos una corrupción insoportable. (Bello 1945(Bello [1847: 339 § 234) 'The pronoun vos, widely employed in Chilean colloquial conversation, is a vulgarity that must be avoided, and constructions including it together with the singular form of a verb are an unacceptable corruption.'

Note:
We would like to thank José Negroni for his careful reading of the English version of this chapter.
Normalization turned out to be successful in Chile and Peru, but it did not have a decisive impact on Argentinean Spanish. In Argentina, the National Council of Education (Consejo Nacional de Educación) required over the years that primary and middle school teachers address their students by the pronoun tú (Kurlat 1941). However, no native Argentinean speaker would nowadays employ the pronoun tú or present indicative/imperative tú forms to address a compatriot in any communicative situation characterized by trust, intimacy, informality and familiarity (García Negroni & Ramírez Gelbes 2004, 2010. This has been the situation at least since the 1960s. In this chapter, we will analyze the use of second person singular terms of address (vos/ usted/tú forms) in Argentinean mass-consumption audiovisual and printed texts from two different periods. Firstly, we will explore the use of second person singular forms in a 1960s corpus (which includes the Argentinean film La patota starring Mirtha Legrand in 1960, political TV programs, presidential interviews, newscasts, cooking shows and magazines). Secondly, we will compare these results with those obtained from a contemporary corpus (which includes the latest version of La patota starring Dolores Fonzi in 2015, political TV programs, interviews with the current president, newscasts, cooking shows and magazines).
According to Blanco (2000), two types of norms must be distinguished: objective (or descriptive), and axiological (or prescriptive). Objective norms are defined as the culturally established and socially validated realization of the abstract possibilities of a certain linguistic system. Prescriptive norms, on the other hand, correspond to the current model of exemplary language usage in any community and every prescription concerning it. The main hypothesis in this chapter is that the prescriptive normative paradigm has changed over the last fifty years and now corresponds to the descriptive norm. After giving a brief historical account of second person singular forms of address in Argentinean Spanish, we will attempt to confirm our hypothesis by analyzing some corpus-derived examples.

Brief historical overview: from Latin vos to Argentinean vos
As is widely known and from an epistemological point of view, Spanish tú has its roots in Latin second person singular pronoun tu. In Latin, there is originally no T-V distinction (Brown & Gilman 1960: 254). Spanish vos stems from Latin second person plural pronoun vos, which started being used in the 4th century to address the emperor, who embodied two roles simultaneously: the emperor of the Western Roman Empire (based in Rome) and the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire (based in Constantinople). Contemporary pronoun vos is therefore connected with power from a historical point of view as pluralis maiestatis ('royal we'). It is also the case that "plurality is a very old and ubiquitous metaphor of power" (Brown & Gillman 1960: 254). As time went by, the vos employed to address the emperor was assimilated by the nobility. Nobles began to employ vos among themselves and were addressed by vos by lower classes. By the 16th century in Spain, vos was so widely used that it started losing its capacity to discriminate among different situations. This encouraged the resurgence of a substitute for conveying formality and social distance, vuestra merced, which eventually became usted. According to different specialists, such as Fontanella de Weinberg (1999), the use of vos at that time was restricted to two very different scenarios. On the one hand, vos was a specific term for symmetrical communication between peers and asymmetrical interchanges between parents and children, or between uncles/aunts and nephews/nieces. On the other hand, it maintained "su valor de fórmula de respeto de alta formalidad en lo que en la época se conocía como su "uso antiguo", ya que conservaba el valor característico de vos en la Edad Media" 'the status of a respectful and formal term of address, which was considered "old-fashioned usage" at that time since it was close to the use of vos in the Middle Ages' (Fontanella de Weinberg 1999: 1412. Given that vos was becoming polysemic, the social strain of avoiding ambiguity encouraged the reassertion of tú in intimate, familiar contexts and vuestra merced in highly respectful and formal contexts.
This novel pronominal usage travelled from Spain to Mexican and Peruvian viceroyalties. The use of vos as a term of address, established in Hispanic America since the 15th century, prevailed in those areas far from the viceroyal courteous norm, where "faltó una clase social celosa de sus privilegios culturales" 'there was no social class protective about its cultural privileges' (Di Tullio 2006: 48). However, vos was uprooted from viceroyalty centers Mexico and Lima, "donde la lengua tenía un alto grado de estandarización" 'where language was highly standardized' (Fontanella de Weinberg 1999: 1414. In fact, the overall use of vos in Hispanic America was progressively stigmatized, and during the 19th and early 20th centuries its use was criticized and considered vulgar. In present-day usage, however, in some Spanish-speaking areas both familiar terms of address tú and vos are employed to address a singular interlocutor, though rarely on an equal basis. In some regions, for example, in Chile, the use of vos forms -pronominal ones particularly -is limited and usually stigmatized, whereas the verbal and pronominal tú paradigm is considered the standard variety. In other areas such as Argentina, the pronominal vos paradigm no longer carries the stigma, and despite the criticisms, the vos paradigm is currently accepted as part of Argentine linguistic norms -both prescriptive and descriptive -and it is generally employed by Argentinean speakers. An illustrative example is the radio advertising slogan of the Argentinean women's magazine Para Ti in the late 1980s: "Para Ti quiere decir para vos" 'Para Ti means for you'. The slogan is a play on words: the name of the magazine means 'for you' in Spanish but employs ti (oblique case for the tú paradigm) instead of vos. The use of ti in the magazine name was a "translation" of a formula crystallized by the prescriptive norm -not by the descriptive one -into Argentinean variety.

The mixed vos paradigm in Argentinean Spanish
( There are some very specific contexts in Argentinean Spanish where tú forms can also be employed for the second person singular nominative case and in prepositional phrases acting as modifiers (ti and contigo). Thus, when speaking to a foreigner (example (7)), in prayers (example (8)) and in poetry and songs (example (9)) tú forms may be found.2 (7) Yo tengo algunas coincidencias contigo respecto del diagnóstico que haces en algunas cosas. Similarly, in contexts where the familiar term of address vos could be felt too informal, some speakers may employ tú forms (example (10)) instead of usted, since they consider the latter too formal.
(10) Estoy de acuerdo contigo. 'I agree with you.' (ethnographic personal corpus) This was the case for the speaker of example (10), a university professor who after his lecture on the national elections in 2015 answered Estoy de acuerdo contigo 'I agree with you', to an interlocutor (a senior businessman) he had never met before. Once the conference finished, the professor was asked why he chose to use tú forms. He replied that he didn't want to be rude, which he felt he would have been if he had used usted -in a university context where most people employ a general vos -or vos, which he considered could be understood too intrusive or even daring.
'Nowadays, if a shop attendant addresses us by usted instead of vos, we believe they considered us so terribly old and respectable that we cannot be addressed by an informal term of address.' However, the use of vos, which has expanded over recent years, can still be considered excessively intimate in some contexts. With regards to the verbal paradigm, present indicative and affirmative imperative forms take the stress on the last syllable (in Spanish, formas agudas), so that they belong exclusively to the vos paradigm, as in examples (11) and (12).4 (11) Cuando vos empezás a decir que habría que encontrar la unidad, yo entonces veo cosas muy hermosas pero muertas, flores disecadas y cosas así.
'When you start saying that unity should be found, I then see beautiful but dead things, dried flowers and things like that.' (Julio Cortázar, 2004[1963, Rayuela, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, p.86).
'Discover the theatre. Live the theatre. Come to the theatre.' (http://www.venialteatro.org/) In the case of other tenses, such as pretérito perfecto simple (example (13), similar to English simple past) and futuro simple (example (14), similar to English construction will + bare infinitive), standard verbal vos forms cannot be distinguished from verbal tú forms, even though they co-occur with vos nominative (see Table 2 below). However, there are two observations to make about the simple past (pretérito perfecto simple) and the present subjunctive for vos. Firstly, the simple past with vos has lost its etymological verb-final -s in standard Argentinean Spanish. According to different authors (Di Tullio 2006;RAE-ASALE 2009: 193, 208, among others), this loss may be due to the stigma that has been associated with the addition of a final -s in the tú simple past form.
(13) Vos dijiste que Redrado era un golpeador y ahora volviste con él. Secondly, the present subjunctive reveals a distinctive feature: when employed along with the pronoun vos (explicitly or implicitly), it can take the stress on the penultimate syllable (formas graves) which is typical of tú forms, as in examples (15) and (16), or on the last syllable (formas agudas) which is typical of vos forms, as in examples (17) and (18). This also occurs in the negative imperative form. We call this latter form voseo reforzado (García Negroni & Ramírez Gelbes 2003, 2004  As it can be seen from Table 2, there are only four typical vos tenses. Whereas the present indicative and imperative are completely accepted as correct and do not compete with any alternative, typical tú forms may alternate with vos forms in the simple past (pretérito perfecto simple) and present subjunctive: as the latter are not registered in the Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE), they are presented in square brackets in the Table. 4 Prescriptive and descriptive norms: historical context As has already been mentioned, Blanco (2000) sets out two norms: the prescriptive or axiological norm, and the descriptive or objective norm. She defines the latter as the culturally established and socially validated realization of the abstract possibilities of a certain linguistic system. In other words, the descriptive norm is associated with how language is actually used at a given time as part of inherited habits (cf. Coseriu 1962), and it can be studied from a descriptive per-spective. Blanco describes the prescriptive norm as including speakers' ideas of correct usage, the current model of standard language usage in a community and language prescriptions. The prescriptivist perspective has exerted its influence on communication and educational public policies in Argentina. In 1934, for instance, the Instructions for Broadcasting Stations (Instrucciones para las Estaciones de Radiodifusión) were developed by Agustín P. Justo's de facto government. These instructions explicitly banned some Spanish varieties, such as lunfardo (Argentinian slang, which originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the City of Buenos Aires due to immigrants' influence), cocoliche (Italian immigrants' creole, spoken in the City of Buenos Aires in the late 19th and early 20th centuries), gauchesco (spoken mainly in the Argentinean, Uruguayan and South-Brazilian countryside by peasants and gauchos, during colonial and postcolonial times) and rioplatense (spoken mainly in Buenos Aires, Rosario and Montevideo, and characterized by the use of vos). This ban was based on the idea that these varieties were not "in good taste". In 1943, the head of Telegraph and Post (Correos y Telégrafos) sent a memo in this regard, demanding the avoidance of 'every word belonging to slang and every idiom distorting the language that are so common in colloquial language, such as salí, andá, etc'7 (Article 8, quoted by Vitale 1999).
General Edelmiro Farrell's de facto government developed these instructions further and in 1946 the Manual de Instrucciones para las Estaciones de Radiodifusión 'Instruction Manual for Broadcasting Stations' was published. This manual would be replaced by a less restrictive law during General Juan Domingo Peron's government. However, in 1957, during the Liberating Revolution (Revolución Libertadora),8 this manual would be again replaced by its original form. Furthermore, these norms were echoed in public education of the time. For example, the National Council of Education banned the use of vos in every school under its government (Kurlat 1941;Vitale 1999). This meant that teachers had to address their students with tú and had to teach pronominal and verbal paradigms excluding vos forms.

Corpus analysis: changes in prescriptive and descriptive norms from 1960 to 2015
The 1960s

1960s: Gap between the prescriptive and descriptive norms
The 1960s corpus illustrates a certain respect for the prescriptive norm promoted by official spheres. The use of tú forms, both pronominal and verbal, and the limited direct address of the interlocutor are considered here as an illustration of the gap between the two norms.
Even though the use of tú (pronominal and verbal forms) is limited, it is employed, albeit non-systematically, and with a supplementary meaning: it contributes to the construction of specific scenarios. The use of tú in example (19) indicates an assumed, socially detached respect (it is the nursemaid who addresses the child with tú, demonstrating at the same time the close affective bond she has with the child who she has brought up).
(19) Nursemaid to Paulina -Paulina, tienes que tomar el té. No puedes estar sin comer nada. '-Paulina, you have to drink the tea. You must have something to eat.' (La patota, film directed by D. Tinayre, 1960) 9 1960s TV programs on the Internet (e.g. El amor tiene cara de mujer, available at https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=RhgnlUUwLMs) can be visited for verification. Even though the objective norm also included the use of tú, it was restricted to written language, e.g. letters from parents to children, poems or songs. In oral language, this usage was even more limited, and it was restricted almost exclusively to elementary school teachers, due to ministerial guidelines (see Rizzi 2002). In examples (20) and (21), the use of tú contributes to the construction of a highly intersubjective and emotive situation, as in melodramas from previous decades.11 (20)  In example (22), the tú forms maintain the original structure of the proverb alluded to (Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres)12 despite the construction of a familiar scenario between the participants (the reader and acquaintances alluded to) in the quoted discourse.
'Tell me what kind of thread you use… And I will tell you how you sew!' (Mucho gusto magazine N° 176, June 1961) The same respect for the prescriptive norm can be observed in the limited direct address of the interlocutor found in some of the examples, at least when compared to similar present-day situations. Pairs of hosts on TV shows, who addressed their audience with usted or ustedes, tended not to use the second singular form to each other in the 60s (cf. Telenoche, newscast of Canal 13).13 We argue that this strategy is an attempt to follow the still prevailing prescriptive norms in the Instructions for Broadcasting Stations. Nowadays, vos forms are employed extensively in interactions among broadcast journalists.

1960s: Prescriptive norm closer to descriptive norm
The 1960s  We want to stress that, as in example (22), the use of tú in example (25) creates a familiar, intimate scenario (Maingueneau 1999), in opposition to the main advertising text that only employs usted to address the audience (readers). This form is much less used in present-day discourse, as we will show below. As can be seen, the 1960s corpus illustrates usage that did not suit the prescriptive norm from the time, such as the use of pronominal and verbal vos forms, typical of informal or intimate contexts.14 Examples (29) and (30) exhibit typical vos forms of address (i.e. present indicative and imperative). Examples (31) and (32), on the other hand, reveal subjunctive forms with stress on the last syllable (typical vos forms or formas agudas). Even nowadays, many Argentinean speakers consider the latter forms incorrect but they occur in some contexts in alternation with typical tú forms or formas graves (stressed on the penultimate syllable) as will be shown below.

1960s: Deviations from the prescriptive norm
We have already suggested in previous studies (García Negroni & Ramírez Gelbes 2003, 2004) that subjunctive formas agudas must be regarded as a case of voseo reforzado. In fact, if typical subjunctive tú forms with the stress on the penultimate syllable (formas graves) are considered part of the vos paradigmas they can be employed along with pronominal vos forms (cf. vos amás, amá (vos), vos amaste, vos amarías, vos ames), typical subjunctive vos forms with the stress on the last syllable (formas agudas) should be interpreted as double voseantes ("doubly" belonging to the vos paradigm). In fact, these forms are not only employed along with pronoun vos, but also take the stress on the last syllable, which is typical of present indicative and imperative vos forms. Just as lastsyllable stress in enclitic constructions15 (cf. dámelo vs. dameló 'give it to me' vs. 'give it to ME'), this "double" condition of the present subjunctive represents a stronger and closer bond between speaker and hearer by diminishing the social distance between them.

2015: Towards a convergence of prescriptive and descriptive norms
The 2015 corpus demonstrates that the use of vos has increased significantly, without underestimating those scenarios where other forms of address are employed. This increase has led in particular to a decline in the use of usted and to an even greater reduction in the use of tú (close to become extinct), although the latter can still be found in the very specific situations we have already mentioned.
The following examples are organized from the smallest gap between prescriptive and descriptive norms to the greatest. The convergence of norms is manifested by the use of vos forms and usted forms in informal and formal contexts respectively (bearing in mind that informality is expanding in present-day exchanges). Examples (33) to (38) illustrate the use of vos.
(33) The person in charge of the educational program to Paulina: -Vení así la saludamos.  (39) to (42) show below, the use of usted has not disappeared. Let's take, for instance, the film La Patota. Although some uses of usted in institutional, formal contexts were found in the latest version of the film (2015), this term of address is exclusively restricted to four scenes, one of which is presented in example (39), between a policeman and Paulina.16 The rest of the scenes (i.e. between Paulina and her father, her boyfriend, her rapist, the doctor, the psychologist, the person in charge of the educational program, etc.) always include the reciprocal use of vos. Restricted as they are in everyday use, usted forms still remain in some formal contexts: certain advertisements addressed to older addressees (example (40)), media talks with foreign or older people (example (41)), and interviews with certain representatives of the government. Example (42) is revealing because the exchange displays the tension between the previous relationship both interlocutors have (marked by vos forms) and the current political position of the interviewee (which calls for the use of usted). Even though they are not very frequent, the 2015 corpus has examples of alternation between usted and vos in the very same scene and produced by the same speaker, whenever he or she feels there is a change in the situation. In example (43) the shift marks a change in the audience (the speaker addresses the teacher but now in front of students), and in example (44) the change is provoked by the intimacy of the topic (the speaker reveals the name of her rapist to Paulina).
(43) The person in charge of the educational program to Paulina, in front of students: -Profesora, se los dejo.
'-Miss, I leave you with them.' (La Patota, directed by S. Mitre, 2015) In previous scenes, when the students were not present, vos forms were employedsee example (13).
(44) Ciro's former girlfriend to Paulina: -Me dice la Laura que usted está embarazada… Mire, señora, yo no la conozco bien pero me imagino lo que usted está pasando. Si quiere que hable con la policía o que le salga de testigo o algo… El que te violó a vos es el Ciro. Es el más grande de todos. No va a la escuela. Trabaja en el aserradero. Yo salí con él un par de veces.
'-Laura told me you're pregnant… Look, lady, I don't know you well, but I can imagine what you're going through. If you want me to talk to the police or to act as witness or anything… The one who raped you is Ciro. He is the eldest. He doesn't go to school. He works in the sawmill. I went out with him a couple of times.' (La Patota, directed by S. Mitre, 2015) As a comparison, within the 48 scenes of 1960s version of La patota, vos forms were employed in 55% of dialogues and usted forms, in 48%. These figures show that, in practice, vos and usted were almost equally employed. This compares with the latest version of the film (71 scenes), where the use of vos rises to 82% and the use of usted drops to 15% -six times less than vos. Moreover, the same characters' linguistic choices in similar scenes (e.g. Paulina and the headmaster/ the person in charge, the doctor and Paulina) shift from usted to vos from one version to the other. Although these figures relate to only two examples of one audiovisual genre, they can be analyzed along with the other audiovisual examples. In the 1960s, usted forms prevailed in TV cooking shows, TV political programs, print advertisements and in presidential interviews, either because of being generally chosen or because of limited direct address. This contrasts to 2015, where vos forms are the most frequent in all these contexts, even for addressing a president or the TV audience.

2015: Prescriptive norm farther from descriptive norm
The 2015 corpus also includes a few uses of tú and voseo reforzado (subjunctive forms with the stress on the last syllable) which exhibit a gap between the prescriptive and descriptive norms, as illustrated by examples (45)  These examples deserve a different approach. Example (45), where an Argentinian addresses a foreigner, is a good example of the persistence of the old prescriptive norm. This phenomenon has already been studied from different perspectives and by several authors (see, among others, Bein 1999;García Negroni & Ramírez Gelbes 2010;López García 2006;Ramírez Gelbes 2011). Argentinian speakers' perceptions of their own linguistic variety are typical of a substandard dialect, even though they do not consciously devalue it. This is why Argentinean speakers may switch from vos to tú forms when addressing a foreigner as if they believed they would not be properly understood.
On the other hand, example (46) is a subjunctive "double" vos form. Although it is not included in any grammar book or academic dictionary, this form conveys a closer intimacy -sometimes emphatic, sometimes aggressivewith the addressee. Indeed, while the use of vos indicates that interlocutors share a symbolic identity, the use of this subjunctive form (typical vos form or forma aguda) clearly reinforces the social proximity and reduces the symbolic gap between them, even physically -interlocutors get closer, either in a warm hug or in a physically hostile way.

Conclusion
In this chapter, we have demonstrated that the prescriptive normative paradigm of second person singular terms of address has been changing over the last fifty years in Argentina. Even though the chosen corpora (1960s and 2015) were collected from mass media, we consider them representative of the relationship between speaking norms in each period.
The paradigm that underlies the use of vos/usted/tú and limited direct address of the interlocutor in the first corpus differs considerably from that in the second corpus, which exclusively favors the use of vos in most contexts. In other words, a gap between the objective or descriptive norm -vos in familiar, intimate contexts and usted in respectful contexts marked by greater social distance -and the prescriptive norm -use of usted/tú and limited direct address of the interlocutor -was noted in the first corpus, whereas in the second corpus, the two norms were clearly becoming more closely identified. This identification between norms shows that the use of vos constitutes the main variant in most contexts, which has also been accepted, belatedly, by the Academia Argentina de Letras.
That said, there are two present-day examples that reveal a gap between the two norms. The first is the use of tú to address a foreigner or a compatriot, in order to convey greater social distance than the use of vos would convey but less than the use of usted. The second is the use of the present subjunctive with the stress on the last syllable (forma aguda), that responds to an attempt to reinforce social proximity and symbolic identity.
One last word concerning both corpora. There has also been a change in the frequency of use of the different terms of address that belong to the descriptive norm (vos/usted). Whereas in the 1960s corpus vos forms were employed similarly in proportional terms to usted forms, in the 2015 corpus the relative use of vos has increased significantly. The Argentinian president's response to the journalist quoted in example (42) is an eloquent illustration of this shift: (47) Yo te desafío, a ver si lográs aguantar "no tratarme de vos" hasta el final, porque, después de tantos años de conocernos, para mí, se te va a escapar.
'I challenge you to keep on "not addressing me by vos" until the end; because, after so many years of knowing each other, I'm sure you won't be able to do it.
[…] Well, let's agree that it's your decision. For me, it's the same: respect is not about addressing someone with vos or usted.' (Animales sueltos, political TV show, Canal América, November 2015)