Transition from V to T address among restaurant customers and waiters in Italy
Drawing on a large-scale study on reported address practices in restaurant encounters in Italy, this chapter examines transition from formal V to informal T singular address pronouns in Italian, focusing on five geographically dispersed regions. Quantitative data suggest that the customer/waiter interaction provides opportunity for frequent V to T transition, with restaurants of a more modest type and those in small towns facilitating such a shift. The region where respondents live also seems to play a role and may be indicative of the effect of local dialects on regional varieties of Italian. Qualitative data indicate that the issue of who initiates the switch is revealing of power dynamics, sometimes involving imposition and resistance. Morphological aspects, such as the complex management of the V form lei, may also be involved.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Literature review
- 2.1V to T transition in Italian
- 2.2Different V address systems in Italian dialects
- 2.3Customer/waiter relationship and Italian address
- 3.Methodology
- 4.Expected results
- 5.Quantitative data
- 5.1Transition from V to T and associated variables
- 5.1.1Transition and age
- 5.1.2Transition and gender
- 5.1.3Transition and regions
- 5.1.4Transition and size of town
- 5.1.5Transition and restaurant status
- 5.2Person initiating V to T transition
- 5.3Mechanisms of V to T transition
- 6.Qualitative data and discussion
- 6.1Circumstances of V to T transition
- 6.1.1Young waiters and young customers
- 6.1.2Common ground
- 6.1.3Regularity of contact and restaurant status
- 6.1.4Tablemates
- 6.1.5Humor and friendliness
- 6.1.6Connection and flirting
- 6.2Initiating and resisting transition
- 6.3Power, imposition and reporting on power
- 6.4Complexity of lei and an interpretation of regional variation
- 7.Conclusions
-
Notes
-
References
-
Appendix
References (32)
Ala-Risku, Riikka
2013 Tradizione e innovazione del sistema allocutivo italiano in un corpus cinematografico. In
Elina Suomela-Härmä,
Juhani Härmä &
Eva Havu (eds.),
Représentations des formes d’adresse dans les langues romanes, 201–247. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
Ashdowne, Richard
2016 Address systems. In
Adam Ledgeway, &
Martin Maiden (eds.),
The Oxford guide to the Romance languages, 897–906. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bates, Elizabeth & Laura Benigni
1975 Rules of address in Italy: a sociological survey.
Language in Society 4 (3). 271–288.
Bellosi, Giuseppe & Gianni Quondamatteo
(eds.) 1979 Le parlate dell’Emilia e della Romagna. Florence: del Riccio.
Blasco Ferrer, Eduardo
1994 Ello ellus. Grammatica sarda. Nuoro: Poliedro.
Brown, Roger & Albert Gilman
1960 The pronouns of power and solidarity. In
Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.)
Style in language, 253–276. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
Cerruti, Massimo
2011 Regional varieties of Italian in the linguistic repertoire.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language 210. 9–28.
Clark, Herbert H.
1996 Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clyne, Michael, Catrin Norrby & Jane Warren
2009 Language and human relations: styles of address in contemporary language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Danesi, Marcel & Michael Lettieri
1983 The pronouns of address in Italian: Sociolinguistic and pedagogical considerations.
Studi Italiani di Linguistica Teorica ed Applicata 12, 323–333.
Félix-Brasdefer, Cesar
2015 The language of service encounters. A pragmatic-discursive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hajek, John, Heinz L. Kretzenbacher & Robert Lagerberg
2013 Towards a linguistic typology of address pronouns in Europe – past and present. In
John Henderson,
Marie-Eve Ritz &
Celeste Rodríguez Louro (eds.),
Proceedings of the 2012 conference of the Australian Linguistic Society (Perth, 5–7 December 2012),
[URL] (
10 September 2016.)
ISTAT
2016a Totale della Popolazione residente al 1° Gennaio 2016 per sesso e stato civile. Provincia: Roma,
[URL] (
29 July 2016.)
ISTAT
2016b Totale della Popolazione residente al 1° Gennaio 2016 per sesso e stato civile. Provincia: Viterbo,
[URL] (
29 July 2016.)
Maiden, Martin & Cecilia Robustelli
2000 A reference grammar of modern Italian. Chicago: NTC.
Márquez Reiter, Rosina & María Elena Placencia
Molinelli, Piera
2010 Allocutivi, pronomi. In
Treccani l’enciclopedia italiana,
[URL] (
10 September 2016.)
Molinelli, Piera
2015 Polite forms and sociolinguistic dynamics in contacts between varieties of Italian. In
Carlo Consani (ed.),
Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato. Atti del Convegno internazionale (Pescara, 29–31 maggio 2014), 283–331. Milan: LED.
Moretti, Giovanni
1987 Umbria. Pisa: Pacini.
Niculescu, Alexandru
1974 Strutture allocutive, pronominali, reverenziali in italiano. Florence: LS Olschki.
Renzi, Lorenzo
1993 La deissi personale e il suo uso sociale.
Studi di Grammatica Italiana 15. 347–390.
Renzi, Lorenzo
1996 “Ma la diga, no xela venezian èla?”. Per una storia delle forme allocutive nei dialetti italiani. In
Paola Benincà,
Gugliemo Cinque,
Tullio De Mauro &
Nigel Vincent (eds.),
Italiano e dialetti nel tempo. Saggi di grammatica per Giulio C. Lepschy, 259–271. Rome: Bulzoni.
Rohlfs, Gerhard
1968 Grammatica storica dell’italiano e dei suoi dialetti. Volume 2: Morfologia. Turin: Einaudi.
Schindler, Ellen
2013 Kommunikative Ritualität im Gastronomiebereich. Freiburg: Freiburger Arbeitspapiere zur Germanistischen Linguistik (FRAGL) 11, Universität Freiburg.
Serianni, Luca
2000 Gli allocutivi di cortesia. In
Treccani l’enciclopedia italiana,
[URL] (
10 May 2015.)
Serianni, Luca & Alberto Castelvecchi
2006 Grammatica italiana: italiano comune e lingua letteraria. Turin: UTET.
Sobrero, Alberto A.
1992 Indicazioni stradali: modello urbano e modello rurale. In
Alberto A. Sobrero (ed.),
Il dialetto nella conversazione. Ricerche di dialettologia pragmatica, 161–172. Galatina: Congedo.
Suomela-Härmä, Elina
2013 Analisi dei questionari italiani. In
Elina Suomela-Härmä,
Juhani Härmä, &
Eva Havu (eds.),
Représentations des formes d’adresse dans les langues romanes, 151–171. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
Tempesta, Immacolata
1995 Tecniche di rilevamento e procedure d’analisi. Il caso della deissi sociale. In
Maria T. Romanello &
Immacolata Tempesta (eds.),
Dialetti e lingue nazionali: atti del XXVII Congresso della Società di linguistica italiana, Lecce, 28–30 ottobre 1993, 432–453. Rome: Bulzoni.
Timm, Christian
2001 Das dreigliedrige Allokutionssystem des Italienischen in Neapel. Frankfurt (Main): Peter Lang.
Cited by (3)
Cited by 3 other publications
Nicole Baumgarten & Roel Vismans
Lappalainen, Hanna & Ildikó Vecsernyés
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 june 2024. 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.