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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 29:4 (2019) ► pp.595–621

Variation in address practices across languages and nations

A comparative study of doctors’ use of address forms in medical consultations in Sweden and Finland

ORCID logo | University of Turku
ORCID logo | University of Helsinki
ORCID logo | University of Helsinki
ORCID logo | Stockholm University
ORCID logo | Tampere University
ORCID logo | University of Helsinki
ORCID logo | The Institute for Language and Folklore

This article compares variation in the use of address practices across languages (Swedish, Finnish) and national varieties (Sweden Swedish, Finland Swedish). It undertakes quantitative and qualitative analyses of three sets of transcribed medical consultations. In Sweden Swedish, address pronouns which lower social distance overwhelmingly dominate. In Finnish, both address forms reducing social distance and practices maintaining greater distance are found, with age and level of acquaintance revealed as the most salient factors. Finland Swedish is located somewhere between Sweden Swedish and Finnish, displaying a stronger tendency than Finnish to use informal direct address forms to reduce social distance, but also showing similarities with Finnish in the use of direct formal address and indirect address. The differences can be related to larger socio-cultural patterns which, however, form a continuum rather than a fixed set keeping the two languages and countries completely apart.

Keywords: address, doctor-patient interaction, medical consultations, intercultural pragmatics, pluricentric languages, Swedish, Finnish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Swedish and Finnish
  • 3.Language and culture
  • 4.Forms of address in Swedish and Finnish
    • 4.1Swedish
    • 4.2Finnish
  • 5.Data and method
  • 6.Quantitative overview
  • 7.Qualitative analysis
    • 7.1T address
    • 7.2V address
    • 7.3Indirect address
  • 8.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Data
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 20 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18031.wid
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2020. Social Meanings of the Hungarian Politeness Marker Tetszik in Doctor-Patient Communication. Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica 12:3 ► pp. 88 ff. DOI logo
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