Previous research has evidenced the current use of the possessive vuestro as part of the paradigms of usted and ustedes in Argentina (Fontanella de Weinberg 1995-1996), Chile (Wagner 1996-1997), Uruguay (Bertolotti 2007, 2020) and Peru (Dankel & Gutiérrez Maté 2020, 2021). This paper starts from the hypothesis that vuestro serves as an alternative to the polysemic su in formal contexts. The study examines written business communication in Spanish American countries with the aim of checking the use of vuestro. A systematic search in company websites yielded more than seven hundred examples. The results show a strategic use of vuestro with both singular and plural referents in six countries and a progressively greater presence towards the Southern Cone.
Research about politeness in speech acts is generally based on the studies of Brown & Levinson (1987 [1978]), which emphasize the idea of strategy. However, many researchers believe that the concepts on which the studies are based only apply to modern Western societies and propose another type of politeness, known as discernment. This article contributes to this debate by discussing politeness in the feudal age, as it is transmitted to us through literary works. By examining addresses to the king, first in chronicles and then in 13th-century Arthurian romances, this research shows that politeness is not expressed through socially preconstructed formulas but rather through facework strategies that take into account not only the social status of the addressees but also their merits, in accordance with the educational recommendations of Hugh of Saint Victor. Finally, the article attempts to clarify the notion of face in the feudal age.
Since the wave of independence at the beginning of the 19th century, the Hispano-American communityhas maintained ambivalent relations with Spain at all levels. Regarding the various (national)dialects of Spanish, the debate between the supporters of linguistic differentiation as amarker of an ethnic identity and the supporters of a unified transatlantic norm is not recent. In thiscontext, the peninsular standard seems to occupy a special place in the Hispanic collective imagination,due in part to its historical influence. The purpose of this article is to discuss these perceptionsbased on the results of a survey conducted by a team of sociolinguists. Placed in the fictitioussituation that is linguistic standardization, the participants of the study are invited to decide on itsmodalities. Through their answers, we will analyze their relationship with the peninsular variant ofSpanish, seeking to assess the extent of the prestige this language enjoys, or not, across the Atlantic.
This paper focuses on the study of directive acts in 19th-century Rio de la Plata Spanish. For this purpose, a specialized microcorpus of 74 private letters written by women to their husbands has been compiled. Using a corpus-driven methodology, both the different linguistic constructions in which these speech acts are performed and their (dis)politeness values have been analyzed. The results obtained from this research reveal significant differences compared to Peninsular Spanish of the same period, as evidenced by a high frequency of direct constructions and the use of attenuating mechanisms.
Among the foreign lexical contributions to Spanish, those from Portuguese exhibit unique characteristics due to the permeability between the two languages, which have influenced each other throughout history. This mutual influence is rooted in their shared common backgrounds, forged during different historical moments of the Iberian Peninsula. Furthermore, during the era of maritime expansion, the Canary Islands became a conduit for numerous Portuguese words that later spread throughout the Americas, converging with the new center of lexical dissemination that is Brazil. The OPORT project aims to compile research on the history of Portuguese influence on the Spanish lexicon and culture, making it accessible on the web. To this end, a website has been established to bring together the available information on this shared lexical heritage and offer carto-graphic visualization of the data.
The introduction analyzes the role of electronic historical corpora in the development of Spanish historical linguistics and the enrichment of Hispanic philology over the past few decades. First, it reviews the electronic corpora currently available in Spanish and explains the motivation for this thematic issue. Second, it examines the main developments in Spanish corpus linguistics and discusses some of the challenges that need to be addressed to improve historical electronic corpora. Finally, the introduction presents and summarizes the articles included in this thematic issue.
As users of electronic corpora, and aware of the complexities involved in their development and preparation for consultation, we aim to highlight several points that, with the help of specialists – engineers, computer scientists, philologists and linguists –, can contribute to refining the tools that will enhance their usability in the future. Electronic corpora greatly facilitate the work of lexicographers and terminology experts; however, those focused on morphology or syntax often need to invest significant time in identifying the elements relevant to their research. Ideally, corpora would feature textual, graphic-phonetic, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic tags. Additionally, it would be very useful to include references to the relationships between documents, along with access to facsimiles or to the original works from which the texts under consideration have been translated.
The objective of this article is to describe the development of the Corpus histórico del español de Costa Rica (COHIECOS), a project aimed at compiling and analyzing colonial Costa Rican documents to investigate the history of Spanish in this region. Along with outlining the features of the corpus, the article details the advantages and disadvantages of the platforms used for document processing, such as the use of Transkribus for transcription and tagging. In this regard, the importance of efficiently visualizing and accessing the documents is emphasized, which is addressed through the digitization of the corpus in TEITOK. The conclusion provides an overview of the work carried out so far, the use of digital platforms, and the potential for integrating this corpus into larger projects.
The DiacOralEs project, running from 2022 to 2026, examines various aspects of the discursive-traditional characterization of Spanish across different periods, with special emphasis on the influence of other languages through translation. To this end, digital corpora such as CorDisDial (dialogues) and EHA-PRESTUS (press) are developed. These corpora are designed according to an approach that aims to address some limitations of corpus linguistics, enabling the exploitation of empirical text material in a way that integrates modern technological tools with the strengths of traditional philological methods, which still remain essential for interpreting speaker behavior and analyzing potential influencing factors.
Reference corpora, situated in the middle of a spectrum with massive corpora on one end and specialized corpora on the other, constitute a widely used resource in linguistic research. In this paper we aim to point out their most prominent characteristics, identify the factors that show their advantages and disadvantages compared to other types of corpora, and highlight the aspects in which their influence has been most notable in Spanish linguistics. Finally, we outline the potential mainlines of their evolution in the coming years.
