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In:“You can say you to me”: Address in German
Edited by Heinz L. Kretzenbacher, Horst J. Simon and Christa Dürscheid
[Topics in Address Research 7] 2026
► pp. 224–248

Chapter 11
Vocatives in Namibian German

Multilingual identities between interconnection and autonomy

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Abstract
This chapter argues that multilingual vocatives allow speech communities to index both interconnectedness with others and autonomy as distinct entities because loanwords often undergo semantic, phonetic and pragmatic change. Therefore, we present a comprehensive overview of nominal vocatives in Namibian German (NG), a minority variety of German in Namibia. NG speakers use vocatives from English (dude, bra, bro), Afrikaans (boet, ou, oukie) and German (Alter, Junge), and innovate cross-linguistic multi-vocative constructions as ingroup address forms. Nominal vocatives, traditionally associated with male speakers, are repurposed to express group identity and linguistic creativity. Drawing on written CMC data (2011–2018) and spoken FTF data (DNam corpus, 2018), we examine their multimodal use and loanword change to show how NG indexes both connection and autonomy.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Borrowing and vocatives
    • 1.2Namibian German
    • 1.3The influence of gender, register and mode on language use
  • 2.Methods used
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Afrikaans
      • 3.1.1Functions of oukie
      • 3.1.2Phonetic and graphemic variation
      • 3.1.3Oukie and the interplay between semantic broadening
        and [g] substitution
      • 3.1.4Oukie as part of multi-word vocatives
    • 3.2English
      • 3.2.1The use of Nam + voc
    • 3.3Gender, language and mode
    • 3.4Vocative versus references
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
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