Reference Impersonals in Texas Spoken Spanish: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Sociopragmatic Variation

Reference impersonals comprise a subtype of impersonal expression under the agentdefocusing approach to impersonality (Siewierska, 2011). These forms, which employ man-type pronouns or subject pronouns used anaphorically, hold a variety of pragmatic functions that, to date, have been underexamined (Akinrẹmi, 2013). In an effort to analyze Spanish reference impersonals under a comprehensive pragmatic framework, the current study examines the use of impersonal se, indefinite uno, and reference impersonal forms of second-person singular tú, first-person plural nosotros, and third person-plural ellos/ellas in corpus data collected from the Spanish In Texas Corpus. Specifically, this study investigates the potential relation between the use of these impersonal forms and specific sociolinguistic (gender, generation, age, age range, education level) and linguistic (verb tense, verb mood, presence of adverbs of time, overt pronouns, or conditional if clauses) variables through a series of chi-square tests of association. Qualitative analysis also explores how the aforementioned reference impersonals serve as mechanisms for generalization, inclusive defocalization, and speaker concealment. Results indicate that U.S. Spanish speakers employ a host of reference impersonals in achieving distinct pragmatic intentions, including focalized generalization and rhetorical usage in addition to the three uses listed above. Additionally, statistically significant differences in reference-impersonal use based on speaker gender and verb tense point to a complete, developed reference-impersonal framework. This study is innovative in its consideration of reference-impersonal forms in addition to traditional impersonality mechanisms and demonstrates the need for a comprehensive framework for reference-impersonality that takes all reference-impersonal forms into account.