This study focuses on the use of usted in the Sociolinguistic Corpus of Merida (Dominguez y Mora 1998). Usted had long been the only pronoun in the speech community ; however the study carried out on El habla de Merida (Dominguez y Mora 1998), shows how the use of tu extends itself among speakers of the higher and lower middle class, as well as among the youth. The use of tu is favored by discourse markers and impersonal se. This pronoun is evaluated as the prestigious: while usted is used among intimates, strangers receive tu. This is so, less because of the fact that tu spreads out from the capital city, than for pragmatic reasons: while usted is the most frequent pronoun, it is also less marked; for that reason is is preferred for signallyng politeness.