The analysis of directives in Puerto Rican Spanish : thirty years later.

Abstract

This study is a replication of the previous work on Puerto Rican Spanish carried out by Simounet in 1990 (1990a), where she explored the structure and distribution of directives in Puerto Rican Spanish, how they compared to directives in American English, and the educational implications of her findings for ESL programs in Puerto Rico. Thirty years later, the present study followed the same objectives as the original study, utilizing Brown and Levinson's 1987 Politeness Theory and Ervin-Tripp's (1976) framework for the analysis of structure. New questions arose during the course of the present study and they were duly addressed. After collecting and analyzing data gathered in three service encounter settings, the results were compared with those obtained by Simounet three decades ago, and the findings indicate that the differences observed between the two studies can in many cases be attributed to sociolinguistic changes in Puerto Rico, particularly those that relate to the role of women in society.