2016 HAWAII UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES

ARTS, HUMANITIES, SOCIAL SCIENCES & EDUCATION JANUARY 8 - 11, 2016

ALA MOANA HOTEL, HONOLULU, HAWAII

POLITENESS AND BUSINESS HIERARCHY IN

BUENOS AIRES SPANISH

UBER, DIANE

THE COLLEGE OF WOOSTER

DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH

Dr. Diane Uber

Department of Spanish

The College of Wooster.

Politeness and Business Hierarchy in Buenos Aires Spanish

Synopsis:

Data from Buenos Aires, Argentina illustrate that instructional practices for students of

Business Spanish must include the concepts of hierarchy, respect and politeness. Norms of

politeness dictate that one should be accommodating toward the addressee. This can be

manifest in the form of the respectful, deferential usted. Alternatively, politeness also can

dictate informal (vos) usage toward those sharing equal social status, or to show

confidence and solidarity toward the consumer.

Politeness and Business

Hierarchy in Buenos Aires

Diane R. Uber

Department of Spanish

The College of Wooster

Spanish

Data from fieldwork in workplaces in

Buenos Aires, Argentina will illustrate some

issues that are important for training future

employees in international business.

I. Data from Buenos Aires

Instructional practices for students of

Business Spanish must include the concepts

of hierarchy, respect and politeness.

Practical application

The hierarchy of a business must be

understood in order to avoid

misunderstandings.

II. Hierarchy

When entering a business, visitors are received by

someone of lower rank. For example, when

visiting a dentist’s office, after I rang the bell, the

receptionist came down to street level to receive

me. After she took me up in the elevator to the

dentist’s office, she brought me tea and cookies.

When I had finished observing, she took me down

in the elevator and said goodbye at the door to the

street.

Smaller businesses

When entering a larger business, visitors are received by someone of lower rank and then guided from one department to another by a supervisor, who then asks the supervisor of the next department to resume the hosting activity. For example, in a company that provides systems and computing technology for banks (processing letters and data processing), I was received by the security guard, who called the branch supervisor, who then came down to receive me. He kissed me on the cheek, and addressed me with the informal pronoun vos. As he escorted me to each

department, he identified the supervisor, who was to “host

me” and then let him know when I was finished in that department and wanted to move on to the next department.

Larger companies

informal companies

Hierarchical structure of small,

All companies, even small, informal ones

whose employees are all under thirty,

exhibit a clear hierarchical structure, as

manifested by employee roles in the

workplace. Employees of lower rank may

open the door, bring beverages for visitors,

and escort them out.

informal company

Example of hierarchy of small,

For example, I visited a small graphic design company of only four

employees, two of whom were about 30 years old and students of my

friend. However, because they outranked a younger employee of

about 25 years, who was not a student of my friend that had set up the

visit, this younger employee was expected to come down to street level

when I rang the bell, to receive me, to escort me up to the office, and

to bring me refreshments. First, he brought me a pitcher of water.

When the conversation turned to mate, the tea frequently drunk by

Argentines, he served me mate. Upon my departure, he was expected

to escort me down to street level and let me out. All of the employees

were dressed in jeans and T-shirts or hooded sweat shirts, and classic

rock music was playing during the several hours that I spent there.

Thus, even in this casual setting, hierarchies are well defined.

Address forms (second-person

pronouns and verb forms) reflect the

concepts of respect and politeness in

the workplace. In Buenos Aires:

Usted + its verb forms=formal address

Vos + its verb forms=informal address

III. Respect

With greater age and higher rank in the

workplace comes respect, which would

dictate usage of the more formal

address (usted).

Age, rank

solidarity

(Lack of) Familiarity or

People with whom a worker is not acquainted are also

addressed with usted. This is especially common for

employees addressing clients. On the next page is an

example of a survey, brought to clients at a rather

expensive restaurant, which uses usted:

ayúdenos

su presencia

verlo

llegó usted

Le gustaría

déjenos sus datos

Survey:

The investigator (who was 58 at the time and from

the United States) experimented with informal

(vos) usage to address some employees younger

than she, but many continued to address her with

usted. Some employees said that they are

incapable of using vos with someone they respect.

One exception was the female bartender at the

hotel where I stayed for five weeks. Eventually,

she began to vacillate between usted and vos to

address me.

Experiment

Norms of politeness dictate that one should be

accommodating toward the addressee.

This can be manifest in the form of the respectful,

deferential usted, as shown in the examples above.

Alternatively, politeness also can dictate informal

(vos) usage toward those sharing equal social

status, or to show confidence and solidarity toward

consumers that are assumed to be from the Buenos

Aires area.

IV. Politeness

switching in marketing

Examples of address

Examples from marketing and advertising will

illustrate these different usages geared toward

different target audiences.

For example, subway tickets use usted for

instructions that riders should keep the ticket:

Conserve esta tarjeta en buen estado.

However, advertisements on the ticket use vos to

address consumers, with whom the business

wishes to establish some feeling of unity.

An advertisement for a chain of movie

theaters shows usted on rider instructions.

The detail of the above advertisement for a chain of

movie theaters uses vos: vas al cine, vas a Hoyts.

An ad for a cell phone company uses vos: tu teléfono, cambiate a Metrotel ivoz., Comunicate con

nosotros, ¿tenés ivoz?

An ad for a pre-loaded credit card also uses vos:

conocé

An ad for a travel web site shows vos:

Llevá tu cuerpo a donde está tu mente.

In contrast, a place mat from a restaurant that

attracts an older clientele uses usted:

Disfrute…

The program from an informal peña (restaurant with

Podés…

performances of Argentine folk music) uses vos:

Podés…

The program from an informal peña (restaurant with performances of Argentine folk music) uses vos:

A menu for a caterer of informal, at-

(The detail is shown on the next page.)

home pizza parties uses vos:

Vos disfrutás…tus invitados…

The detail of the catering menu

(The detail is shown on the next page.)

Full pizza menu

Te…quieras…. …tenés…tu casa….

The detail of the catering menu

Businesses, both small and large, and both formal and informal, are more hierarchical in Spanish- speaking countries.

Respect is shown by the usage of formal address directed to distinguished or older clients or to the general public (negative politeness).

A switch from usted to vos in the same document can foster group identity (positive politeness) when that segment of the document is directed toward speakers of the Spanish of Buenos Aires.

Conclusions

Thanks to the Faculty Research and Study Leaves

program at The College of Wooster for approving my

one-year research leave.

The Henry Luce III Fund for Distinguished Scholarship assisted with my travel expenses.

Several professionals and business people permitted

me to visit and observe in their workplaces.

Finally, my most profound thanks to Soledad López

Gambino and her parents, Jorge López and Carolina

Gambino for facilitating most of my contacts in both

the city and province of Buenos Aires.

VI. Acknowledgements

Brown, Penelope y Levinson, Stephen C. 1987. Politeness: some universals in language usage (Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics 4). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

García, Carmen. 1992. Refusing an invitation: A case study of Peruvian style, Hispanic

Linguistics, 5: 207-243.

Kaul de Marlangeon, Silvia. 2010. Voseo, ustedeo y cortesía verbal en folletos de

propaganda argentinos, en Martin Hummel, Bettina Kluge y María Eugenia Vázquez Laslop

(eds.), Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico. México, D.F.: El Colegio

de México: 993-1011.

Uber, Diane R. 2010. Formas y fórmulas de trato en situaciones laborales en Santiago de

Chile y Buenos Aires, en Martin Hummel, Bettina Kluge y María Eugenia Vázquez Laslop

(eds.), Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico. México, D.F.: El Colegio

de México: 1051-1080.

Uber, Diane R. 2011. Forms of address: the effect of the context, en Manuel Díaz-Campos

(ed.), The handbook of Spanish sociolinguistics (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics)

Oxford: Blackwell: 244-262.

Uber, Diane R. 2014. Spanish Forms of Address in Advertising and Marketing Documents in

Madrid: Respect and Politeness.” Proceedings of the 2014 Hawaii University Conference on

Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Honolulu, HI, January 4-6, 2014. ISSN 2162-9188

CD-ROM and ISSN 2162-917X online.

VII. References