Moving towards the realm of the other: second-person objectivization in Spanish media discourse

• The use of nonspecific second-person subjects is a resource for objectivization.
• It appears as a creative stylistic choice across the array of oral mass-media genres.
• It also tends to be chosen by speakers displaying certain social self-images.
• The distribution of this choice reflects the differential preference for its meaning.
• A path towards a model of syntactic variation as meaning construction is envisaged.

This paper analyzes the use of Spanish nonspecific second-person subjects in oral mass-media—radio and TV—discourse as a grammatical choice endowed with a communicative potential. Traditionally-termed generic or impersonal second persons are prompted by an intention to de-subjectivize some propositional content by indexically detaching it from the particular circumstances of the speaker. In order to more clearly formalize this value, the label objectivizing second persons is proposed. Their choice in the domain of mass communication is shown to be aimed at the accomplishment of a variety of goals, sometimes including manipulation of the audience. An analysis is conducted of the frequencies with which objectivizing second-person subjects occur across different oral mass-media genres, as well as across speakers classified according to their socioprofessional ascription and sex/gender. It is concluded that the distributional patterns observed reflect the differential preference for the discursive meaning of the resource under study and its possible repercussions on speakers' images. Tackling the fact that formal choice is intrinsically linked to the generation of meaning may contribute to the development of a comprehensive, explanatory model of syntactic variation.