Abstract

The aim of the present study is to analyse nominal forms of address used by the clarisse nun Úrsula Suárez in her Relación autobiográfica, written in the beginnings of the 18th Century. This piece of writing, which is especially recognised in Latin American Spanish, reveals the interactive dimension of social relationships through reported speech, mainly based on natural and spontaneous registers. Thus, we describe the use and variation of nominal address terms in religious, divine and family contexts. Also, we explore the alternation with pronominal and verb address forms through direct and indirect speech. Our findings also include discourse-stylistic strategies of depersonalization of the second person towards third person structures. We conclude that the conventual autobiographic genre proves to be a valid and useful source for the sociohistorical analysis of linguistic variation and change, particularly relevant in less studied regional varieties.