Perception and Processing of Address Terms
A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2024) | Viewed by 4369
Special Issue Editors
Interests: pragmatics; grammar; 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 (helen.dehoop@ru.nl) or to the Languages editorial office (languages@mdpi.com). 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
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Keywords
- address terms
- formal and informal second person
- language processing
- perception
- experiments