On forms of address in Portuguese in Angola: the case of você (you)

Abstract

The starting point for this study is the observation that, by generalizing its use in the Angolan context, the treatment form you will acquire, as is registered in the diatopic and diastratic varieties of PE, distinct semantic values, pragmatic and discursively determined. It is because of the context (formal, informal) and the relationship (vertical, horizontal) that you registers considerable rates of occurrence in Angola, including in contexts in which, according to the standard norm, such use is discouraged. Data were obtained by applying a questionnaire with twenty questions, all simulating real communication situations. The questionnaire was distributed and filled out online by 115 participants of different educational levels, provinces of residence, age group and sex. From the data analysis, which follows an eminently qualitative approach, it was possible to identify different types of use of you: you of intimacy, you of intimacy-affection, you of respect-affection, you of superiority, you of inferiority, you of detachment; you interpolate, you derogatory. The discursive context, the type of expressive act, of praise or criticism, formal or informal, the relationship between the interlocutors, of power, solidarity, or proxemics, are determining variables for the association of one of those semantic values to you. The conclusion is the following: when a positive semantic value is associated with you, it occurs in an expressive speech act of praise and the pronominal treatment presents percentage data (very) close to the data related to the nominal treatment; when, on the contrary, it occurs in expressive acts of criticism, it reveals itself to be considerably threatening from the negative face, which is reflected in the reduction of its use, translated into (very) low percentage rates, compared to percentage rates related to nominal treatment. Therefore, the less used the you will be, the more threatening it is to the negative face of the addressee.