Introduction

Correct sociopragmatic use of addressivity in Spanish, although essential for successful communication, may be difficult to acquire in the traditional language classroom. This longitudinal study investigates how synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) may aid second/foreign language learners in their development of addressivity through interaction with expert speakers of the target language. A microanalytical analysis of the data shows that participants engaged in collaborative interactions and extended language use, including multiple repair sequences initiated by the expert speaker, which resulted in the improvement of the student sociopragmatic knowledge and pragmalinguistic competence.

Addressivity

According to Braun (1988), addressivity can be accomplished mainly through the use of three forms: (1) Forms of address . These are pronouns referring to the collocutor(s). (2) Verb forms of address . Reference to the collocutor is expressed by means of inflectional suffixes. (3) Nouns of address . Substantives and adjectives which designate collocutors or refer to them in some other way (e.g. kinship terms and titles). Of all these forms, pronouns of address have been the most investigated as indexing addressivity, probably because pronouns are independent forms, and are not influenced by other factors such as tense and aspect, which imprint greater variation and difficulty.

Pronouns of address, although once described quite straightforwardly by Brown and Gilman (1970) as being a dichotomy between a simple or intimate pronoun of address (T) used to express familiarity/solidarity and intimacy, and a polite, distant or secondary pronoun (V) used to express formality/distance/hierarchy, have proved to be much more complicated (Braun, 1988; Morford, 1997; Mühlhäusler & Harré, 1990). Morford (1997) proposes that the complexity of the pronoun system is due to two different but related orders of indexicality. The first order involves social relationships (solidarity, intimacy, hierarchy), while the second one refers to aspects of the speakers' identity (social class, political orientation).