Second-person Address Forms in Contemporary Uruguayan Children’s Literature

In this study, we analyze the representations of singular address (voseo, tuteo, and ustedeo) in contemporary Uruguayan children’s literature from 1997 to 2011 as part of a broader analysis of variation and change in Uruguayan Spanish (Behares 1981; Bertolotti 2011; Bertolotti and Coll 2003; Elizaincín and Díaz 1981; Mendoza 2005; Moyna 2009, 2015: Moyna and Ceballos 2008; Steffen 2010). Specifically, we answer the following questions: 1) to what extent do address forms in Uruguayan children’s literature align with vernacular usage? And, 2) what are the main sociopragmatic functions of each address form? Fourteen children’s books by six different authors were considered and their data were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. We found that contemporary Uruguayan children’s literature avoids prescriptivism and represents vernacular usage accurately. However, authors vary in their preferences, with didactic genres more likely to reflect standard usage rather than local norms.