The variation of informal pronouns in Costa Rican Spanish is complex and substantially different from that in other varieties of Spanish. Of the available second-person pronouns tú, vos, and usted, many varieties employ usted as a formal pronoun and either tú or vos as an informal pronoun. However, in Costa Rica the informal pronouns usted and vos coexist, appearing in the same conversation and directed towards the same interlocutor, and the paradigm excludes tú completely. Choice of pronoun is sometimes based on dialectal, stylistic and pragmatic variation, but the “pronominal dance” (Quesada Pacheco) and seemingly random choice of pronoun call for careful studies at the level of conversation. While these studies have established tendencies that explain some of the pronominal variation, they are not sufficient and data often present contradictions. Since free variation is not widely accepted, further study is needed to understand rules governing pronoun use in Costa Rica.
