Being polite in Argentina

Abstract This paper focuses on the use of Spanish pronouns in polite-address contexts, where speakers tend to prefer the (dative) form le over the (accusative) forms lo and la. However, previous research has shown that this does not hold for all dialects (García & Otheguy, 1983) nor for all contexts (Mauder, 2008). Based on García’s (1975) analysis of the pronoun forms in terms of ‘degrees of activity’ we present an explanation for the distribution of the forms and we show that the verbs and constructions used in polite-address contexts differ notably from canonical contexts. We propose an explanation for the dialectal variation based on whether speakers use the pronoun for commenting on the referent’s degree of activity, independently of the chosen verb.