Die Verwendung des Anredepronomens "vos" und anderer altspanischer Phänomene im Comic El Guerrero del Antifaz

Scientific presentation delivered as part of the workshop “Mittelaltercomics – Alte Sprachen, neue Geschichten” (24 June 2025), organized by Daniela Pietrini at the Universität Augsburg.

The paper analyses the use of the address pronoun vos —originally a politeness form— in Medieval Spanish as employed in the recreation of medieval language in the popular mid-twentieth-century Spanish comic El Guerrero del Antifaz. The analysis reveals a certain exaggeration in the use of this pronoun, which is extended even to all intrafamilial relationships. As a result, vos functions less as a marker of politeness and more as a signal or marker of “medieval language” for the twentieth-century reader—exotic, yet familiar.

Nevertheless, tú, the canonical pronoun for close and familiar relationships in Medieval Spanish, does occur in the comic with clearly marked sociolinguistic or pragmatic functions (and functions that are ideologically charged within the historical context of the comic’s production). For instance, tú is used consistently to address Arab characters, and it also appears in the representation of the forms of address used by Arabs among themselves (whose dialogues are presented in Spanish translation).

Finally, in some cases there is alternation between the two pronouns (tú and vos), which can be explained with reference to universal principles of address switching