The Syntactic Construction of Directive Speech Acts and Their Orders of Indexicality in Educated Cuban Spanish

Abstract

Introduction: Cuban grammatical studies, traditionally focused on structuralist description, have tended to remain separate from the integration of grammar, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. This study examines the syntactic patterns and indexical functions of directive speech acts in educated Cuban Spanish in order to determine how their prototypical syntactic structures index social.

Methods: A qualitative discourse-analytic methodology was applied to a multimodal spoken corpus of educated speakers from Santa Clara, Cuba, comprising 65 spontaneous conversations in workplace and family settings. Each directive was coded according to the four dimensions of Mulder’s analytical model—predicative, personal deictic, modification, and sentence type—in conjunction with Brown and Levinson’s politeness factors and the orders of indexicality proposed by Silverstein and Blommaert. This procedure enabled the classification of each utterance, the identification of its subcategories, and the cross-referencing of formal classifications with observed indexical functions, thereby systematizing variation across contexts and social relationships.

Results: The findings show that directive speech acts are realized through a wide range of linguistic resources that not only seek to elicit an action on the part of the addressee, but also encode power, politeness, hierarchy, and solidarity. In workplace settings, forms that reinforce institutional authority predominate; in family settings, directives more often employ affective mitigation, signal interpersonal rapport, and rely on impersonalization strategies. Contextual indexes—including vocative forms, diminutives, and colloquial expressions—proved decisive for interpreting illocutionary force and negotiating social roles.

Conclusions: The study demonstrates that the syntax–indexicality interface is essential for understanding how speakers manage authority, affectivity, and cultural norms in everyday spoken communication. It proposes an integrative approach that aligns Cuban grammatical studies with current trends in linguistic research. The limitations of the corpus, which remains under development, point to future regional expansions.