Forms of treatment: Portuguese and Spanish in focus

Abstract

Being linguistically competent is, besides mastering the morphosyntactic rules and semantics of each language, it is also to know the set of norms that regulate the proper behavior of the members of a particular social environment. Language, as a means of interaction with other individuals, cannot be detached from its sociocultural characteristics. To the respect,
each society establishes rules, which include the forms of treatment that sanction the conduct of communicative behaviors as being adequate or inadequate. The way we treat others is embedded in a social code that, when transgressed, can cause damage in the relationship between the interlocutors. Specifically, forms of treatment designate both the terms that refer to the speaker-hearer pair, as the vocatives used to draw the attention of the recipient, including the so-called personal pronouns of treatment as well as the nominal forms. The purpose of this work is to make considerations about the forms of treatment in Brazilian Portuguese and Iberian Spanish; present theories that address the subject of courtesy; and finally, on the basis of data obtained from two works of Brazilian theater of the 20th century, analyze and compare the pragmatic strategies developed through the forms of treatment in both Brazilian Portuguese and Iberian Spanish. With this study we also intend to offer teachers of foreign language some appreciation of the difficulties,  pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic, that in the process of acquisition/learning of the forms of treatment may occur due to the influence of the mother tongue.