Cover not available
Part of
It's different with you: Contrastive perspectives on address research
Edited by Nicole Baumgarten and Roel Vismans
[Topics in Address Research 5] 2023
► pp. 197–219

Chapter 8
A comparative study of nominal forms of address in metropolitan French and British English service encounters

| University of Cambridge

This chapter investigates nominal forms of address in metropolitan French and British English service encounters. The study considers the different pragmatic functions they play in interaction, examining their relational and organisational properties, combining a politeness theoretic framework and a conversation analytic one. Nominal forms of address play an important part in the management of the interpersonal relationship between customer and shopkeeper. As attention-getting devices, they can be used to delineate different phases of the interaction. Although they frequently have the same function in both linguacultures, they index different positions within the social order.

Keywords: vocatives, politeness, interpersonal relationship, routinisation, cooperation, respect, consideration, requests, reciprocity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.What are NFAs?: Definition, functions and values
    • 2.1Definition
    • 2.2Form selection: T and V
    • 2.3Pragmatic function of NFAs
  • 3.Methodology and data
    • 3.1Service encounters (SEs)
    • 3.1The data
  • 4.Data analysis: Patterns of NFA use in SEs
    • 4.1Frequency of NFAs in opening and closing sequences
    • 4.2NFAs in the French data: Reciprocity of use
    • 4.3NFAs in the English data: Asymmetry and absence of use
    • 4.4The NFA mate as an egalitarian marker
    • 4.5NFAs in the transaction: Request prompts and organisational markers
  • 5.Discussion and concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tar.5.08gag
References
Aijmer, Karin
1996 Conversational routines in English: Convention and creativity. London, New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Baude, Olivier, Claire Blanche-Benveniste, Marie-France Calas, Paul Cappeau, Pascal Cordereix, Laurence Goury, Michel Jacobson, Isabelle de Lamberterie, Christiane Marchello-Nizia & Lorenza Mondada
. Corpus oraux: Guide des bonnes pratiques 2006 Paris, Orléans: CNRS.Google Scholar
Braun, Friederike
1988 Terms of address: Problems of patterns and usage in various languages and cultures. Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope, & Stephen C. Levinson
1987 Politeness. Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Roger, & Albert Gilman
1960 The pronouns of power and solidarity. In Thomas Albert Sebeok (ed.), Style in language, 253–276. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Clayman, Steven E.
2010 Address terms in the service of other actions: The case of news interview talk. Discourse & Communication 4(2). 161–183. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Address terms in the organization of turns at talk: The case of pivotal turn extensions. Journal of Pragmatics 44(13). 1853–1867. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cook-Gumperz, Jenny
2001 Cooperation, collaboration and pleasure in work. In Aldo Di Luzio, Susanne Günthner & Franca Orletti, (eds), Culture in communication: Analyses of intercultural situations, 117–140. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dunkling, Leslie
1990 A dictionary of epithets and terms of address. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro
1997 Universal and culture-specific properties of greetings. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 7(1). 63–97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, Susan
1972 On sociolinguistic rules: alternation and co-occurrence. In John J. Gumperz & Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics. The ethnography of communication, 213–50. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fasold, Ralph W.
1990 The sociolinguistics of language. Oxford: Blackwell 1990.Google Scholar
Formentelli, Maicol
2007 The vocative mate in contemporary English: A corpus based study. In Andrea Sansò (ed.), Language resources and linguistic theory, 180–99. Milan: Franco Angeli.Google Scholar
Gagne, Christophe
2018 Indirectness and entitlement in product requests in British service encounters. Journal of Pragmatics 133. 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1967 Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Anchor Books; Chicago, IL: Aldine.Google Scholar
1981 Forms of talk. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hmed, Neijete
2003 Analyse comparative des interactions: Le cas de trois commerces: français, tunisien et franco-maghrébin. Université de Lyon 2. Unpublished doctoral thesis.
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine
1992 Les Interactions verbales II. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
2005 Le discours en interaction. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
2010a Pour une approche contrastive des formes nominales d’adresse. Journal of French Language Studies 20(1). 3–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010b (ed.), S’adresser à autrui: Les formes nominales d’adresse en français. Chambéry: Université de Savoie.Google Scholar
2014 (ed.), S’adresser à autrui: Les formes nominales d’adresse dans une perspective comparative interculturelle. Chambéry: Université de Savoie.Google Scholar
2017 Les débats de l’entre-deux-tours des élections présidentielles françaises: constantes et évolutions d’un genre. Paris: Editions L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine & Véronique Traverso
(eds.) 2009 Les interactions en site commercial. Lyon: ENS Editions.Google Scholar
Kluge, Bettina
2019 On translating pronominal and nominal terms of address. In Bettina Kluge & María Irene Moyna (eds.), It’s not all about you: New perspectives on address research 1: 47. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey
1999 The distribution and function of vocatives in American and British English conversation. Language and Computers 26. 107–20.Google Scholar
2014 The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lepésant, Géraldine
2003 Interactions verbales dans un magasin de chaussures. Université de Lyon 2. Unpublished master’s thesis.
Lerner, Gene H.
2003 Selecting next speaker: the context-sensitive operation of a context-free organization. Language in Society 32(2). 177–201. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liddicoat, Anthony J.
2006 Learning the culture of interpersonal relationships: Students’ understandings of personal address forms in French. Intercultural Pragmatics 3(1). 55–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 An Introduction to conversation analysis 2nd: Second Edition. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Michael & Anne O’Keeffe
2003 What’s in a name?’ Vocatives in casual conversations and radio phone-in calls. In Pepi Leistyna & Charles F. Meyer Ch. (eds.), Corpus analysis: Language structure and language use, 153–185. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perret, Delphine
1968 Termes d’adresse et injures. À propos d’un dictionnaire des injures. Cahiers de lexicologie, n° 12. varia. 5–16.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff & Gail Jefferson
1974 A simplest systematics for the organization of turn taking for conversation. Language 50(4). 696–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. & Harvey Sacks
1973 Opening up closings. Semiotica 8(4). 289–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sifianou, Maria
2000 Politeness phenomena in England and Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stanger, Ted
2003 Sacrés Français: Un Américain nous regarde. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Thomas, Jenny
1983 Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics 4(2). 91–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traverso, Véronique
2006 Aspects of polite behaviour in French and Syrian service encounters: A data-based comparative study. Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture 2(1). 105–122. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 Cadres, espaces, objets et multimodalité. In Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni & Traverso Véronique (eds.), Les interactions en site commercial, 45–76. Lyon: ENS Editions.Google Scholar
Tsakona, Villy & Maria Sifianou
2019 Vocatives in service encounters: evidence from Greek. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 51(1): 60–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna
2016 Making sense of terms of address in European languages through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). Intercultural Pragmatics 13(4). 499–527. DOI logoGoogle Scholar