The standardisation of vocês throughout the European Portuguese

Abstract

The levelling of vocês as the informal form of address in plural in the European Portuguese still lacks an investigation in depth. Apart from the data collected in the Linguistic Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula and the scarce occurrences in the corpus CORDIAL-SIN, there do not exist studies about this phenomenon or its double agreement system. With the aim of shedding light on the usage of vocês and the agreements it induces, as well as its evolution during nearly a century, I have carried out fieldwork by surveying elderly informants. The results, based on an analysis of a real time change, show a wider geographic area where vocês is employed. Additionally, women and urban centres seem to be more inclined to respect the standard pattern. Lastly, a paradigmatic change in the European Portuguese forms of address system is emerging in order to distinguish formality and informality in plural.