El Voseo Andino Tachirense: ¿Marca de Género?

Abstract

The gradual obsolescence of the pronounvos in Tachira’s speech community has motivated this study, the purpose of which is to determine the social and linguistic factors that still support this form of address. A survey has been applied to a group of speakers in the region. The results show that the use of vos and the desire to be addressed with this pronoun are below 1%. Even though this term of address reflects speakers’ marginal behavior and it has very little prestige among the Andeans, the pronoun vos is still used in the slang of a segment of the Tachira’s population: the young men who live in the city seem to use vos as a mark of identity and cohesion.