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Perception and Processing of Address Terms
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Perception and Processing of Address Terms

A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2024) | Viewed by 2994

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Helen de Hoop

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, 6525 XZ Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Interests: pragmatics; grammar; cognition
Dr. Gert-Jan Schoenmakers

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute for Language Sciences, Utrecht University, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands
Interests: syntax; communication; cognition

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In many languages, speakers have a choice between a formal and an informal form when addressing others. The choice between these forms, labelled V- and T-pronouns from Latin vos and tu by Brown and Gilman (1960), varies across languages and situations, and changes over time (Plevoets et al. 2008; Vismans 2019; Aalberse 2009). It depends on several factors such as age, gender, education level, religion, social distance, individual preferences, etc. (cf. Norrby and Warren 2012 for an overview of address research). Because address choices reflect social structures and cultural values, much research has been devoted to the sociolinguistic study of address choice. Less research has been done on how the use of a formal or informal form is processed by those addressed. It is generally believed that people who are addressed with a pronoun they perceive as inappropriate in a given context may feel uncomfortable or even offended. Notoriously, T-pronouns are prevailing on social media, both for individuals and companies, but whether a formal or informal form of address is perceived as positive or negative may depend on the context of use (cf. de Hoop et al. 2023). For example, in personal communication between companies and customers, some customers may prefer to be addressed with the formal rather than the informal pronoun (Truan 2022), while at the same time, consumers may value the informal pronoun more than the formal pronoun in product advertisements (Leung et al. 2022; Schoenmakers et al., to appear). This Special Issue aims to provide new insights on how the use of a formal or informal form of address may affect the addressee.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editors ([email protected]) or to the Languages editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring they fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

References

Aalberse, Suzanne (2009). Inflectional economy and politeness: Morphology-internal and morphological-external factors in the loss of second person marking in Dutch. PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam. LOT: Utrecht.

Brown, Roger, Albert Gilman (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In: T.A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language, 253–276. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

de Hoop, Helen, Natalia Levshina, Marianne Segers (2023). The effect of the use of T or V pronouns in Dutch HR communication. Journal of Pragmatics 103, 96–109. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2022.11.017.

Leung Eugina, Anne-Sophie I. Lenoir, Stefano Puntoni, Stijn M.J. van Osselaer (2022). Consumer preference for formal address and informal address from warm brands and competent brands.” Journal of Consumer Psychology. doi: 10.1002/jcpy.1322.

Norrby, Catrin, Jane Warren (2012). Address practices and social relationships in European languages. Language and Linguistics Compass 6/4, 225–235.

Plevoets, Koen, Dirk Speelman, Dirk Geeraerts (2008). The distribution of T/V pronouns in Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch. In: K.P. Schneider and A. Barron (eds.), Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages, 181–209. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/pbns.178.09ple.

Schoenmakers, Gert-Jan, Jihane Hachimi, Helen de Hoop (to appear). Can YOU make a difference? The use of (in)formal address pronouns in advertisement slogans. Journal of International Consumer Marketing. doi: 10.1080/08961530.2023.2215472.

Truan, Naomi (2022). When can I say du to you? The metapragmatics of forms of address on German-speaking Twitter. Journal of Pragmatics 191, 227–239.  doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2022.02.008.

Vismans, Roel (2019). Address negotiations in Dutch emails. In: B. Kluge and M.I. Moyna (eds.), It’s not all about you: New perspectives on address research, 254–279. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Prof. Dr. Helen de Hoop
Dr. Gert-Jan Schoenmakers
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

 

Keywords

  • address terms
  • formal and informal second person
  • language processing
  • perception
  • experiments

Published Papers (3 papers)

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14 pages, 360 KiB  
Article
Metalinguistic Commentary on Forms of Address in a Finnish Autobiographical Novel Series
by Hanna Lappalainen and Maija Saviniemi
Languages 2024, 9(5), 153; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9050153 - 23 Apr 2024
Viewed by 455
Abstract
This article examines the metalinguistic commentary on address practices in a Finnish autobiographical novel series, the 26-volume Iijoki-sarja ‘Iijoki Series’ (1971–1998) by Kalle Päätalo. Our aim is to show how the forms of address affect the protagonist and other characters. The study is [...] Read more.
This article examines the metalinguistic commentary on address practices in a Finnish autobiographical novel series, the 26-volume Iijoki-sarja ‘Iijoki Series’ (1971–1998) by Kalle Päätalo. Our aim is to show how the forms of address affect the protagonist and other characters. The study is anchored in previous sociopragmatic research on address and in folk linguistics. The analysis is based on searches in the digital corpus of the whole series by means of keywords related to forms of address. The analysis proceeds chronologically, from Kalle’s childhood and adolescence to his marriage and working life, including his social rise from a poor country boy to a full-time novel writer. Our results show that Kalle, the fictional protagonist of the series, mirrors his own and others’ choices in address practices throughout his life against the norms he has learned in his childhood. These choices are explained by the (relative) age, sex, status and regional background of the interlocutors. Metalinguistic comments reflect the characters’ social relations and changes in them during the protagonist’s linguistic biography. We argue that fiction can open up perceptions and contexts related to address practices that are not easily accessible by other methods or datasets. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Perception and Processing of Address Terms)
18 pages, 432 KiB  
Article
Perceptions of Forms of Address in European Portuguese in Online Metadiscourse or What Happens When You Use você in Court
by Rita Faria
Languages 2024, 9(4), 133; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9040133 - 07 Apr 2024
Viewed by 454
Abstract
The point of departure for this study is an incident in 2020 when a football manager testifying in a Lisbon court used the pronoun of address você and was reprimanded. With the aid of corpus linguistics, we qualitatively analyse the comments (understood as [...] Read more.
The point of departure for this study is an incident in 2020 when a football manager testifying in a Lisbon court used the pronoun of address você and was reprimanded. With the aid of corpus linguistics, we qualitatively analyse the comments (understood as metacomments) that this case generated on media outlets and social media. The main conclusion is that the sociocultural foundations of EP (European Portuguese) address are polarised and unstable based on the following: the nexus between forms of address and the expression of (im)politeness is often rejected, with concerns that a complex system of address might impede an egalitarian society; despite this, discernment remains a core facet, expressed in the concern for finding appropriate sociolinguistic rules so as to arrive at forms understood as intrinsically (im)polite. Furthermore, a binary T/V dimension does not apply to the EP system, and although a N (neutral) dimension should be added, the polarised perceptions of EP address preclude clear candidates not only for the N platform but also, to an extent, for the V dimension. Fifty years after the 1974 ‘Carnation’ Revolution that initiated the transition to democracy in Portugal, EP conceptualisations of address show that sociocultural concerns for an egalitarian society coexist with persistent concerns for hierarchy and rules. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Perception and Processing of Address Terms)
21 pages, 464 KiB  
Article
The (Lack of) Salience of T/V Pronouns in Professional Communication: Evidence from an Experimental Study for Belgian Dutch
by Laura Rosseel, Eline Zenner, Fabian Faviana and Bavo Van Landeghem
Languages 2024, 9(3), 112; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9030112 - 20 Mar 2024
Viewed by 1022
Abstract
In their quest to find a suitable tone of voice in an informalizing society, many companies are confronted with the choice of using T or V pronouns in their B2C communications. This paper presents an experimental study addressing the question of whether the [...] Read more.
In their quest to find a suitable tone of voice in an informalizing society, many companies are confronted with the choice of using T or V pronouns in their B2C communications. This paper presents an experimental study addressing the question of whether the recipients of these messages actually notice the difference between being addressed with a T form, which carries social meanings of informality and proximity, or a more distant V form, and to what extent the presence of additional informal linguistic features influences the salience of a pronoun switch. We furthermore investigate to what extent the professional socialization of participants impacts on the noticing of pronoun use. In a case study for Belgian Dutch, participants (N = 279) were presented with two versions of an information letter that they were asked to read quickly. The texts were manipulated for the use of T/V pronouns, as well as, depending on the condition, a number of additional informal linguistic features (i.e., informal punctuation, intensifiers, and English lexical items). Participants were not warned in advance about the changes between the two versions of the stimulus text. In a salience test following the presentation of the two text versions, less than 10% of participants noticed a switch in T/V form regardless of the presence of additional informal features. Similarly low rates of noticing were found for the other informal features, except for English loanwords. No differences were found depending on whether participants had a language-related professional background (e.g., language teachers, journalists, editors). We argue that the lack of noticing T/V pronouns may be due to the specifics of the Belgian Dutch system of pronominal address that has an additional highly salient colloquial pronoun of address which may obscure the difference in social meaning between the standard T and V pronouns. The discussion critically evaluates the implications of the study for the use of T/V pronouns in professional communication, musing on the complex relationship between noticing and evaluating. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Perception and Processing of Address Terms)
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