El Receptor en el text : el vocatiu

Abstract

In this paper I analyse one of the most explicit markers for the presence of the reader in the text, namely the vocative. Vocatives, which are peripheral and unnecessary words from a grammatical point of view, contribute to the contextual information, particularly regarding the discourse roles of the speaker and hearer and the proximal or distal relation-ship between them. To describe the behaviour of these words, I have analysed the vocatives that appear in a corpus of non-fiction texts classified according to the type of exchange (individual, social and institutional spheres). The vocatives are described considering whether they are proper nouns, common nouns or forms of address. They are analysed syntactically (position and combination) and pragmatically, relating them to politeness and to the text structure.