Address pronouns are often discussed within a T-V model of evaluation, where T symbolizes a familiar or informal approach and V a polite or formal approach. These two postures are originally associated with asymmetric personal and group interaction. N-V-T is an alternative framework of evaluation that considers neutrality, N, as an essential component. English unmarked, single pronoun you bypasses the T-V binary and has become a global example of the N posture. This chapter analyses the Anglophone case and how it compares with other languages, in some of which a traditional V or T encoder may be playing a new role in response to the inter-relational shifts which are taking place in today’s worldwide evolution of address pronoun social dynamics.
This chapter uses qualitative and quantitative analysis of interactions collected in a New Zealand rugby team to analyse the way in which pronominal choice impacts upon the social dynamics of leadership discourse. In particular, the pseudo-inclusive first person plural pronoun is examined in terms of its solidarity enhancing effect and mitigation of leadership-focused speech acts. Pronominal use is analysed with reference to the sociolinguistic concept of stance alignment and how this can mitigate potential face-threat. The discussion considers that by including themselves with the addressees of an interaction, leaders can attenuate the illocutionary force of speech acts such as directives and criticism, whilst maximising the directness of their expression, and goes on to question the social function of pseudo-inclusive compliments.
In this chapter, we analyse how the personal pronouns in the Portuguese language system have evolved from a basic prescriptive use recommended by the grammar handbooks to a more complex and fluent performance by its more than 250 million Lusophone speakers, adapting to their particular differences and needs. The main focus is on the Brazilian Portuguese and how the non-traditional implementation of a differentiated personal pronoun system in Brazil abides by linguistic, social, and cultural laws, establishing new forms and usages toward fulfilling meaningful demands in Brazilian society.
Polycentric languages experience variation. Address pronouns and other forms of address constitute an area which is particularly open to national preferences, where the language is influenced by different cultural backgrounds and performs at the service of different social dynamics. In translation work, achieving comparable renderings between the source language and the target language will require a discerning awareness of specific sociological and sociolinguistic characteristics in the relevant places of origin and destination of the text being converted. This chapter examines challenges and proposes solutions for those decoding and encoding between English and Portuguese. It does so using a framework of evaluation deemed to promote insight and using techniques that are transferable to other language pairs, particularly where English is involved.
The aim of this research was to examine the Italian pronouns of address by means of (1) diachronic, (2) diatopic, and (3) diastratic analyses. Drawing on corpus linguistics, we compiled a two million-word corpus made up of narrative texts written by both men and women writers from the Italian classic literature. (1) Our outcomes confirm that the most recurrent pronoun is tu, whereas Voi and Lei quantitatively come after. With respect to politeness strategies, the pronoun Voi appeared with a higher frequency during the 19th century, whereas Lei was more recurrent during the 20th and the 21st centuries. (2) Our data suggest that, unpredictably, both pronouns tu and Lei would be idiosyncratic to Southerners and Voi to Northerners in our diachronic corpus, whereas both tu and Voi appear to be typical of individuals from the South and Lei from the North in our contemporary corpus. This also confirms some tendencies: the current regional use of Voi as the V-form in the South as well as the increase in the usage of tu. (3) Men writers would tend to be more polite than women authors. Besides, women writers who supported the fascist regime tended to make use of the pronoun Voi in order to comport with its politics of pronouns. On the contrary, antifascist women had the tendency to use the pronoun Lei. Contrary to the bulk of research, the outcomes of this research emphasise men’s politeness rather than women’s while adding up crucial data on the temporal evolution of the pronouns.
The morphology and grammatical functions of French personal pronouns are first introduced with reference to their Latin origin in the context of the Indo-European language family. Considering that the forms of personal pronouns are necessarily grounded in the preliterate emergence of language and that the metalinguistic characterization of their grammatical functions glosses over their signalling values as spatial or territorial markers, this chapter endeavours to probe the ways in which these pronouns not only reflect but also, more importantly create or enforce social structures in learning and acculturation processes. From this point of view, personal pronouns in their contexts of use can be considered as speech acts in as much as they create equality of status, intimacy, bonding, or dominance, and can transform any of these kinds of relations into one another. Evidence is drawn from personal experience in the form of revealing anecdotes and from the use of the social and interpersonal power of pronouns in literary texts that purport to portray face-to-face and epistolary interactions.
Nepali uses various morphological means formally to distinguish at least five levels of deference in verbal interaction. In addition to the three Nepali second person pronouns, for each of which the Nepali verb distinguishes separate conjugated forms, Nepali speakers also make use of the deferentially conjugated verb in combination with the respectful term hajur or with kinship terms to give expression to different levels of deference and formality. Moreover, the Nepali verb distinguishes a separate mediopassively conjugated construction used exclusively when the notional subject of the sentence is a member of the former royal family. Speakers can also exploit the device of the ambiguous avoidance term āphu ‘self’ or make oblique reference to the second person through the use of the first person plural when a speaker is uncertain of the register which would be most appropriate.
Unlike the simple two-term system found in many Western languages, such as French tu vs. vous, the choice of pronoun and conjugation between intimate friends and indeed between higher caste married couples tends to be highly asymmetrical. The semiotics of this asymmetry is commensurate with the degree of intimacy which the two individuals feel towards each other. This phenomenon, strikingly unfamiliar to the contemporary Occidental, illustrates rather vividly how different the sensibilities and semantic underpinnings of the many tiers of deference expressed by pronominal usage and other morphological parameters in Nepali are from those of an intimate interaction whereby the two European individuals might simply be able to tutoyer each other. A descriptive account is provided of actual usage, and an analytical exposition of the semiotics of this morphologically diverse system of indexing relationships in Nepali speech is presented.
In the Chinese pronominal system, the first-person singular pronoun wǒ is the unmarked or grammatical form of the speaker’s reference to himself/herself, which is deictic in nature. In daily conversation, however, other deictic expressions such as plural first-person and second-person pronouns, and even non-deictic proper names and descriptive expressions, can be employed to convey self-referential meanings. By analyzing the data collected from an authoritative Chinese corpus, we claim that self-reference is not merely the marking of the speaker’s participant role but a process of identity foregrounding or ad hoc identity construction exploited by the speaker in communication. This identity construction via self-reference reflects the dynamics and complexity of self-reference in verbal interaction.
The Chinese language has a five-thousand-year history, and one can track the evolution of pronouns from historical to contemporary texts. Some historical Chinese pronouns constitute complex systems. In Chinese, address systems are a more obvious indicator of politeness (Kádár 2007). However, the subtle use of pronouns in Chinese to show (im)politeness has gone quite unnoticed. In the 18th Century novel Dream of the Red Chamber, one needs to understand the social dynamics of the contexts in which the pronouns are used to know why plural pronouns are used to refer to single referents and second-person and third-person singular pronouns are used to refer to more than one referents.
The novel features the complex social hierarchy within an influential family where each person is mindful of his position in the web of social strata. Therefore, it is vital to understand the social hierarchy of the speakers, interlocutors, and referents to understand why such discrepancies occur. These discrepancies between pronouns and referents indicate the attitudes of the speakers towards the people they are speaking or referring to, functioning like a social index showing attitudes in the context of hierarchical social networks.
This analysis explores the complex existential relationship that multilingual speakers in the Philippines forge between sign (language) and object (ego) when referring to themselves in Taglish using both the first-person pronouns, I (English) and ako (Tagalog) in single tweets. Bringing together complementary analytical approaches on pronouns, codeswitching/mixing, and voice, this analysis explores the ways in which the self can be dynamically constituted in the dialogic interplay of first-person pronouns in English and Tagalog on the social media platform of Twitter. Data explored in this chapter help to investigate the philosophical question of whether I and ako operate in a one-to-one existential relationship with the ego and to examine the complex ways that languages dynamically interact with one another to construct complex, kaleidoscopic selves.
Indonesian has an open pronoun system that provides speakers with a range of first and second person terms. Drawing on data from informal conversation, we examine second person expressions used for address and reference in sequence initiating actions in multiparty interaction. Previous work on English has shown that address and reference are bound up in the systematics of turn taking, and that these practices are context-sensitive. We show this is also the case for Indonesian and that: (a) variation in sequential placement of person terms does stancetaking work; (b) speakers can choose between long and short forms of a name, with short names regularly used for strong exhorting, often in a double-address structure spanning two intonation units; (c) the availability of multiple second person terms means that, unlike a language with limited second person terms such as English, second person reference can also achieve explicit addressing; (d) indeterminacy in both the structure and social action of an utterance can arise due to the frequency of allusive reference and the flexibility of word order in Indonesian. Our study contributes to current literature by showing how the dynamics of address and reference play out in a language with a much richer and varied set of person terms than English has.
Affinal avoidance registers are strategies of restrained linguistic conduct in relation to one’s in-laws. Current theories are primarily concerned with two types of strategies: (1) taboos on uttering the proper names of affines, and (2) substitution of everyday words with dedicated parallel lexicon in the presence of affines (so-called “mother-in-law languages”). However, the role of pronouns has received limited attention. Here we explore little-known registers in the Aslian languages (Austroasiatic, Malay Peninsula), where dedicated pronoun paradigms take centre stage in communication with and about in-laws. We characterise and compare these closely related but internally diverse systems, situate them in their cultural contexts, and discuss their status in relation to current theories and typologies of avoidance and honorific registers.
Address pronouns are often discussed within a T-V model of evaluation, where T symbolizes a familiar or informal approach and V a polite or formal approach. These two postures are originally associated with asymmetric personal and group interaction. N-V-T is an alternative framework of evaluation that considers neutrality, N, as an essential component. English unmarked, single pronoun you bypasses the T-V binary and has become a global example of the N posture. This chapter analyses the Anglophone case and how it compares with other languages, in some of which a traditional V or T encoder may be playing a new role in response to the inter-relational shifts which are taking place in today’s worldwide evolution of address pronoun social dynamics.
This chapter uses qualitative and quantitative analysis of interactions collected in a New Zealand rugby team to analyse the way in which pronominal choice impacts upon the social dynamics of leadership discourse. In particular, the pseudo-inclusive first person plural pronoun is examined in terms of its solidarity enhancing effect and mitigation of leadership-focused speech acts. Pronominal use is analysed with reference to the sociolinguistic concept of stance alignment and how this can mitigate potential face-threat. The discussion considers that by including themselves with the addressees of an interaction, leaders can attenuate the illocutionary force of speech acts such as directives and criticism, whilst maximising the directness of their expression, and goes on to question the social function of pseudo-inclusive compliments.
In this chapter, we analyse how the personal pronouns in the Portuguese language system have evolved from a basic prescriptive use recommended by the grammar handbooks to a more complex and fluent performance by its more than 250 million Lusophone speakers, adapting to their particular differences and needs. The main focus is on the Brazilian Portuguese and how the non-traditional implementation of a differentiated personal pronoun system in Brazil abides by linguistic, social, and cultural laws, establishing new forms and usages toward fulfilling meaningful demands in Brazilian society.
Polycentric languages experience variation. Address pronouns and other forms of address constitute an area which is particularly open to national preferences, where the language is influenced by different cultural backgrounds and performs at the service of different social dynamics. In translation work, achieving comparable renderings between the source language and the target language will require a discerning awareness of specific sociological and sociolinguistic characteristics in the relevant places of origin and destination of the text being converted. This chapter examines challenges and proposes solutions for those decoding and encoding between English and Portuguese. It does so using a framework of evaluation deemed to promote insight and using techniques that are transferable to other language pairs, particularly where English is involved.
The aim of this research was to examine the Italian pronouns of address by means of (1) diachronic, (2) diatopic, and (3) diastratic analyses. Drawing on corpus linguistics, we compiled a two million-word corpus made up of narrative texts written by both men and women writers from the Italian classic literature. (1) Our outcomes confirm that the most recurrent pronoun is tu, whereas Voi and Lei quantitatively come after. With respect to politeness strategies, the pronoun Voi appeared with a higher frequency during the 19th century, whereas Lei was more recurrent during the 20th and the 21st centuries. (2) Our data suggest that, unpredictably, both pronouns tu and Lei would be idiosyncratic to Southerners and Voi to Northerners in our diachronic corpus, whereas both tu and Voi appear to be typical of individuals from the South and Lei from the North in our contemporary corpus. This also confirms some tendencies: the current regional use of Voi as the V-form in the South as well as the increase in the usage of tu. (3) Men writers would tend to be more polite than women authors. Besides, women writers who supported the fascist regime tended to make use of the pronoun Voi in order to comport with its politics of pronouns. On the contrary, antifascist women had the tendency to use the pronoun Lei. Contrary to the bulk of research, the outcomes of this research emphasise men’s politeness rather than women’s while adding up crucial data on the temporal evolution of the pronouns.
The morphology and grammatical functions of French personal pronouns are first introduced with reference to their Latin origin in the context of the Indo-European language family. Considering that the forms of personal pronouns are necessarily grounded in the preliterate emergence of language and that the metalinguistic characterization of their grammatical functions glosses over their signalling values as spatial or territorial markers, this chapter endeavours to probe the ways in which these pronouns not only reflect but also, more importantly create or enforce social structures in learning and acculturation processes. From this point of view, personal pronouns in their contexts of use can be considered as speech acts in as much as they create equality of status, intimacy, bonding, or dominance, and can transform any of these kinds of relations into one another. Evidence is drawn from personal experience in the form of revealing anecdotes and from the use of the social and interpersonal power of pronouns in literary texts that purport to portray face-to-face and epistolary interactions.
Nepali uses various morphological means formally to distinguish at least five levels of deference in verbal interaction. In addition to the three Nepali second person pronouns, for each of which the Nepali verb distinguishes separate conjugated forms, Nepali speakers also make use of the deferentially conjugated verb in combination with the respectful term hajur or with kinship terms to give expression to different levels of deference and formality. Moreover, the Nepali verb distinguishes a separate mediopassively conjugated construction used exclusively when the notional subject of the sentence is a member of the former royal family. Speakers can also exploit the device of the ambiguous avoidance term āphu ‘self’ or make oblique reference to the second person through the use of the first person plural when a speaker is uncertain of the register which would be most appropriate.
Unlike the simple two-term system found in many Western languages, such as French tu vs. vous, the choice of pronoun and conjugation between intimate friends and indeed between higher caste married couples tends to be highly asymmetrical. The semiotics of this asymmetry is commensurate with the degree of intimacy which the two individuals feel towards each other. This phenomenon, strikingly unfamiliar to the contemporary Occidental, illustrates rather vividly how different the sensibilities and semantic underpinnings of the many tiers of deference expressed by pronominal usage and other morphological parameters in Nepali are from those of an intimate interaction whereby the two European individuals might simply be able to tutoyer each other. A descriptive account is provided of actual usage, and an analytical exposition of the semiotics of this morphologically diverse system of indexing relationships in Nepali speech is presented.
In the Chinese pronominal system, the first-person singular pronoun wǒ is the unmarked or grammatical form of the speaker’s reference to himself/herself, which is deictic in nature. In daily conversation, however, other deictic expressions such as plural first-person and second-person pronouns, and even non-deictic proper names and descriptive expressions, can be employed to convey self-referential meanings. By analyzing the data collected from an authoritative Chinese corpus, we claim that self-reference is not merely the marking of the speaker’s participant role but a process of identity foregrounding or ad hoc identity construction exploited by the speaker in communication. This identity construction via self-reference reflects the dynamics and complexity of self-reference in verbal interaction.
The Chinese language has a five-thousand-year history, and one can track the evolution of pronouns from historical to contemporary texts. Some historical Chinese pronouns constitute complex systems. In Chinese, address systems are a more obvious indicator of politeness (Kádár 2007). However, the subtle use of pronouns in Chinese to show (im)politeness has gone quite unnoticed. In the 18th Century novel Dream of the Red Chamber, one needs to understand the social dynamics of the contexts in which the pronouns are used to know why plural pronouns are used to refer to single referents and second-person and third-person singular pronouns are used to refer to more than one referents.
The novel features the complex social hierarchy within an influential family where each person is mindful of his position in the web of social strata. Therefore, it is vital to understand the social hierarchy of the speakers, interlocutors, and referents to understand why such discrepancies occur. These discrepancies between pronouns and referents indicate the attitudes of the speakers towards the people they are speaking or referring to, functioning like a social index showing attitudes in the context of hierarchical social networks.
This analysis explores the complex existential relationship that multilingual speakers in the Philippines forge between sign (language) and object (ego) when referring to themselves in Taglish using both the first-person pronouns, I (English) and ako (Tagalog) in single tweets. Bringing together complementary analytical approaches on pronouns, codeswitching/mixing, and voice, this analysis explores the ways in which the self can be dynamically constituted in the dialogic interplay of first-person pronouns in English and Tagalog on the social media platform of Twitter. Data explored in this chapter help to investigate the philosophical question of whether I and ako operate in a one-to-one existential relationship with the ego and to examine the complex ways that languages dynamically interact with one another to construct complex, kaleidoscopic selves.
Indonesian has an open pronoun system that provides speakers with a range of first and second person terms. Drawing on data from informal conversation, we examine second person expressions used for address and reference in sequence initiating actions in multiparty interaction. Previous work on English has shown that address and reference are bound up in the systematics of turn taking, and that these practices are context-sensitive. We show this is also the case for Indonesian and that: (a) variation in sequential placement of person terms does stancetaking work; (b) speakers can choose between long and short forms of a name, with short names regularly used for strong exhorting, often in a double-address structure spanning two intonation units; (c) the availability of multiple second person terms means that, unlike a language with limited second person terms such as English, second person reference can also achieve explicit addressing; (d) indeterminacy in both the structure and social action of an utterance can arise due to the frequency of allusive reference and the flexibility of word order in Indonesian. Our study contributes to current literature by showing how the dynamics of address and reference play out in a language with a much richer and varied set of person terms than English has.
Affinal avoidance registers are strategies of restrained linguistic conduct in relation to one’s in-laws. Current theories are primarily concerned with two types of strategies: (1) taboos on uttering the proper names of affines, and (2) substitution of everyday words with dedicated parallel lexicon in the presence of affines (so-called “mother-in-law languages”). However, the role of pronouns has received limited attention. Here we explore little-known registers in the Aslian languages (Austroasiatic, Malay Peninsula), where dedicated pronoun paradigms take centre stage in communication with and about in-laws. We characterise and compare these closely related but internally diverse systems, situate them in their cultural contexts, and discuss their status in relation to current theories and typologies of avoidance and honorific registers.