Terms of address

Friederike Braun
Table of contents

Terms of address are the linguistic forms speakers use to refer to their collocutor(s), in the words of Oyetade (1995: 515) “words or expressions used to designate the person being talked to while talk is in progress”. In English, for example, these are words like you, mom, young man, or Professor Snyder. Even though forms of address may serve to open an interaction as in example (1), they should be distinguished from contact words or greetings that do not refer to the addressee (e.g. Hi, Excuse me, Good morning).

Full-text access is restricted to subscribers. Log in to obtain additional credentials. For subscription information see Subscription & Price.

References

Blum-Kulka, S. & T. Katriel
1991 Nicknaming practices in families. A cross-cultural perspective. In Ting-ToomeyS. & F. Korzenny (eds.). Cross-cultural interpersonal communication: 58–78. Sage.Google Scholar
Braun, F.
1984 Anredeformen im Tigrinya. In W. Winter (ed.). Anredeverhalten: 245–292. Narr.Google Scholar
1986 Du und Sie in Jordanien. Eine Untersuchung zur gebundenen Anrede im jordanischen Arabisch. SAIS Arbeitsberichte aus dem Seminar für Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft (Kiel) 9: 76–105.Google Scholar
1988 Terms of address: Problems of patterns and usage in various languages and cultures. Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Brown, P. & S. Levinson
1978 Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In GoodyE.N. (ed.). Questions and politeness: 56–310. Cambridge University Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar
1987 Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, R.
1965 Social psychology. Free Press/Collier-Macmillan.  BoPGoogle Scholar
1990 Politeness theory: Exemplar and exemplary. In I. Rock (ed.). The legacy of Solomon Asch: Essays in cognition and social psychology: 23–38. Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Brown, R. & M. Ford
1961 Address in American English. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 62: 375–385. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. & A. Gilman
1960 The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T.A. (ed.) Style in language: 435–449, 253–276. MIT Press/Wiley.  BoPGoogle Scholar
1989 Politeness theory and Shakespeare’s four major tragedies. Language in Society 18: 159–212. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Dufon, M., G. Kasper, S. Takahashi & N. Yoshinaga
1994 Bibliography on linguistic politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 21: 527–578. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Duranti, A.
1992 Language in context and language as context: the Samoan respect vocabulary. In A. Duranti & C.A. Goodwin (eds.). Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon: 77–99. Cambridge University Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Emihovich, C.A.
1981 The intimacy of address: friendship markers in children’s social play. Language in Society 10: 189–199. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, C.A.
1978 Talking to children: a search for universals. In J.H. Greenberg, C.A. Ferguson & E.A. Moravcsik (eds.) Universals of human languages: Vol. 1, 203–224. Stanford University Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Gilman, A. & R. Brown
1958 Who says “Tu” to whom. ETC.: A Review of General Semantics 15(3): 169–174.Google Scholar
Grimm, J.
1837 Deutsche grammatik, vol. 4. Dieterichsche Buchhandlung.Google Scholar
Hollos, M.
1975 Comprehension and use of social rules in pronoun selection by Hungarian children. Working Papers in Sociolinguistics 24 Austin.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Hong-Fincher, B.
1987 Indications of the changing status of women in modern standard Chinese terms of address. In D.C. Laycock & W. Winter (eds.). A world of language: Papers presented to Professor S.A. Wurm on his 65th birthday: 265–273. Dept. of Linguistics, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Irvine, J.
1995 Honorifics. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman & J. Blommaert (eds.) Handbook of Pragmatics: 1–22. John Benjamins. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Janney, R. & H. Arndt
1993 Universality and relativity in cross-cultural politeness research: A historical perspective. Multilingua 12(1): 13–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keshavarz, M.H.
1988 Forms of address in post-revolutionary Iranian Persian: A sociolinguistic analysis. Language in Society 17: 565–575. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Kramer, C.
1975 Sex-related differences in address systems. Anthropological Linguistics 17(5): 198–210.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Kroger, R. & L.A. Wood
1984 Are the rules of address universal? III: Comparison of Chinese Greek, and Korean usage. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology 15(3): 273–284. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1992 Are the rules of address universal? V: Comparison of Chinese Korean, Greek, and German usage. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology 23(2): 148–162. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuntzsch, L.
1988 Zu den Anredeformen in verschiedenen Komunikationsbereichen der DDR. Deutsch als Fremdsprache 25: 299–303.Google Scholar
Lyons, J.
1980 Anna Karenina. In S. Greenbaum, G. Leech & J. Svartvik (eds.) Studies in English linguistics for Randolph Quirk: 235–249. Longman.Google Scholar
Martiny, T.
1996 Forms of address in French and Dutch: A sociopragmatic approach. Language Sciences 18(3–4): 765–775. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Mcgivney, J.
1993 “Is she a wife or a mother?” Social order respect, and address in Mijikenda. Language in Society 22: 19–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meier, A.J.
1995a Passages of politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 24: 381–392. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1995b Defining politeness: Universality in appropriateness. Language Sciences 17(4): 345–356. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Obeng, S.G.
1997 Indirectness in pronominal usage in Akan discourse. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16(2): 201–221. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oyetade, S.O.
1995 A sociolinguistic analysis of address forms in Yoruba. Language in Society 24: 515–535. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wood, L.A.
1993 Forms of address discourse and aging. Journal of Aging Studies 7(3): 263–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wood, L.A. & R.O. Kroger
1991 Politeness and forms of address. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 10(3): 145–168. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wootton, A.J.
1981 Children’s use of address terms. In FrenchP. & M. Maclure (eds.). Adult-child conversation: 142–158. St. Martin’s.Google Scholar