Linguistic reference in the negotiation of identity and action: Revisiting the T/V distinction

Abstract

The present study uses naturally occurring conversational data from various dialects of Spanish to examine the role of second-person (T/V) reference forms in the accomplishment of social action in interaction. I illustrate how the turn-by-turn progression of talk can occasion shifts in the linguistic means through which speakers refer to their hearers, an interactional commonality between dialects (and possibly languages) that are otherwise pronominally dissimilar. These shifts contribute to the action of an utterance by mobilizing the semantic meaning of a pronominal form in order to recalibrate who the interactants project they are, and who they project they are to one another—not in general, but rather at that particular moment in the ongoing interaction. The analysis posits a distinction between identity status and identity stance to argue in favor of a more microlevel conceptualization of identities and contexts as emergent features of moment-by-moment discourse, co-constructed through the deployment of grammatical structure.