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
Top Related