Article published in:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Im/politeness
Edited by Marina Terkourafi
[AILA Applied Linguistics Series 14] 2015
► pp. 71–90

“There’s not a lot of negotiation”

Address terms in an academic department

One way that communities with status or power hierarchy can mark hierarchical relationships is by means of address. Community members may differ in attitude towards the hierarchy and prefer address reflecting imagined or preferred social distance, or social meanings other than the classic power-solidarity semantic of Brown and Gilman (1960). This paper reports on research within an academic unit, in which members of different “ranks,” undergraduate student, graduate student, and faculty, participated in group interviews on the topic of address terms. Different relational and interactional goals emerge for each group. While faculty are sometimes willing to make their varied address preferences clear, students find faculty preferences less than transparent. Graduate students face difficult choices, needing to negotiate address preferences with their undergraduate students as well as with faculty.
Published online: 28 May 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.14.04mer
References
Adams, M
2009 Power, politeness and the pragmatics of nicknames. Names 57(2): 81–91. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Atkinson, D.L
1987 Names and titles: Maiden name retention and the use of Ms. Journal of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistics Association 9: 56–83.Google Scholar
Benton, T
. (pseudo) 2006 Don’t call me Thomas. Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, Careers Section.Google Scholar
Bogoch, B
1999 Courtroom discourse and the gendered construction of professional identity. Law and Social Inquiry 24(2): 329–373. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. & Gilman, A
1960 The pronouns of power and solidarity. In Style in Language, Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.). Cambridge MA: Technology Press.Google Scholar
Brown, P. & Levinson, S
1987 Politeness: Some Universal in Language Usage Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Clyne, M., Kretzenbacher, H.L. Norrby, C. & Schüpbach, D
2006 Perceptions of variation and change in German and Swedish address. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10(3): 287–319. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, M., Stark, A.C. & Hackett Renner, C
1998 The meaning of Ms.: Social assimilation of a gender concept. Psychology of Women Quarterly 22: 197–208. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dickey, E
1997 Forms of address and terms of reference. Journal of Linguistics 33: 255–274. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Formentelli, M
2009 Address strategies in a British academic setting. Pragmatics 19(2): 179–196. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, J.M
2005 The uses and meanings of the female title Ms. American Speech 80(2): 180–206. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lillian, D.L
1993 She’s still a bitch, only now she’s older! Papers of the Annual Meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association 19: 149–61.Google Scholar
Luchkina, T
2007 Culture of Address in Oral Forms of Academic Interaction. MA thesis, Illinois State University.
Murray, T.E
1997 Perception of Ms.-titled women: Evidence from the American Midwest. Onomastica Canadiana 79: 73–96.Google Scholar
Rendle-Short, J
2007 “Catherine, you’re wasting your time”: Address terms within the Australian political interview. Journal of Pragmatics 39: 1503–1525. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, R
1981 Ideal traits and terms of address for male and female college professors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 41(5): 966–974. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H
1996 Reconsidering power and distance. Journal of Pragmatics 26: 1–24. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Svennevig, J
1999 Getting Acquainted in Conversation [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 64]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Takiff, H.A., Sanchez, D.T. & Stewart, T.L
2001 What’s in a name? The status implications of students’ terms of address for male and female professors. Psychology of Women Quarterly 25: 134–144. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Winchatz, M
2001 Social Meanings in German Interactions: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Second-Person Pronoun Sie . Research on Language and Social Interaction 34(3): 337–369. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wright, S
2009 Forms of address in the college classroom. In Names in Multilingual, Multicultural and Multiethnic Contact: Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, W. Ahrens, S.M. Embleton & A. Lapierre (eds). Toronto: York University.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

Burt, Susan Meredith
2019.  In It’s not all about you [Topics in Address Research, 1], ► pp. 398 ff. Crossref logo
Formentelli, Maicol & John Hajek
2015.  In Address Practice As Social Action: European Perspectives, ► pp. 119 ff. Crossref logo
Formentelli, Maicol & John Hajek
2022. Address practices in academic interactions in a pluricentric language. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 631 ff. Crossref logo
Murphy, Sean, Jonathan Culpeper, Mathew Gillings & Michael Pace-Sigge
2020. What do students find difficult when they read Shakespeare? Problems and solutions. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 29:3 ► pp. 302 ff. Crossref logo
Norrby, Catrin, Doris Schüpbach, John Hajek & Heinz L. Kretzenbacher
2019.  In It’s not all about you [Topics in Address Research, 1], ► pp. 376 ff. Crossref logo
Ton, Thoai Nu-Linh
2019.  In It’s not all aboutyou [Topics in Address Research, 1], ► pp. 24 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 may 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.