Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah University Applied Language Studies and

Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences Research in Higher Education

Master Program
Dhar Mehraz, Fez

Address Forms
I. What is an address form?
An address form is known also as address term or a form/term of address. It simply refers to the word or words
used to address somebody in speech or writing. According to Fasold (1990), “address forms are the words
speakers use to designate the person they are talking to while they are talking to them” (pp. 1-2).

Distinguishing Address Forms from other Concepts

Address forms are sometimes confused with other concepts. One of these concepts is honorifics. The latter
refers to “politeness formulas in a particular language which may be specific affixes, words, or sentence
structures” (The Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching). Another term that may
be confused with address forms is the so-called term of endearment, which refers to a word or phrase used to
address or describe a person, animal or inanimate object for which the speaker feels love or affection. Courtesy
formulae can also be confused with address forms.

According to Fasold (1990), “a distinction is often made between how a person is addressed and how he is
referred to. A person may address his wife by her first name, but he may refer to her as my wife, Mrs Harris,
Toomy’s mother, etc” (p.3) [emphasis added]. address forms are also distinguished from the so-called
summonses. The latter include examples, such as sir or mister. These forms are used only to get attention of
any adult male. The use of sir apart from trying to get one’s attention is somehow inappropriate. As Fasold put
it, “it would most likely sound overly stiff to use ‘sir’ once you have his attention” (p.3). Last but not least,
address terms can also be confused with kin terms. These include words like uncle, father and sister, among
others. Kin terms can be used as address terms as in saying to someone who is older than “my uncle” in our
Moroccan culture.

The forms of address forms

The use of different forms for addressing people is sociolinguistically bound. The way in which people address
one another usually depends on their age, sex, social group, and personal relationship (The Longman Dictionary
of Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching 1992, p.290).According to Fasold (1990), “address forms are
really part of a complete semantic system having to do with social relationships” (p.2). In general, the most
common address forms are names, second-person pronouns and kin terms. The use of either of these forms
depends on social status and role relationship. For example, a president of a faculty may be addressed with a
title and a last name, whereas a friend can be addressed with just a first name. Traversing the forms of address
for the aforementioned people results in sociolinguistic failure, and is more likely to culminate into a conflict.

The use of different forms for addressing people varies across languages. For example, the second person
singular pronoun varies from English to French. While this pronoun is not context sensitive in English in that it
uses only you, it is changeable in French depending mainly on context and role relationships. The second
person pronoun in French has two forms, namely ‘tu’ and ‘vous’. ‘Tu’ is used when participants have close
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relationship, whereas ‘vous’ is used when the relationship between participants is formal. The same distinction
can be found in German Sie – tu, in Spanish usted – tu and in Mandarin Chinese nín – ni (you).

II. Summaries of some studies:

The European Address System

Brown and Gilman study (1960/1972)

This study attempted to investigate the use of second-person pronoun in English, Germen, French, Italian and
Spanish. Brown and Gilman focused on two independent variables, namely power and solidarity. The findings
can be described in brief as follows:

Figure 1: The two dimensional semantic in equilibrium. Source: Brown and Gilman (1972:259).

 Equals use reciprocal address forms: addressing someone using ‘vous’ and receiving ‘vous’, or
addressing someone ‘tu’ and receiving ‘tu’.
 Equal and solidarity: addressing someone ‘tu’ and receiving ‘tu’.
 Non equal and non reciprocal use of address terms: as in addressing someone as ‘tu’ and receiving
‘vous’, or addressing someone as ‘vous’ and receiving ‘tu’.
 Equal and non solidarity use: addressing someone ‘vous’ and receiving ‘vous’.

American English Address

The address system of American English has been analyzed by Brown and Ford (1961), Ervin Tripp and Solbin
et al (1968.)

Brown and Ford Study (1961):

Data was collected by means of literary sources (a set of modern literary plays), interviews with farmer
reporting on the behavior of his employees, and a corpus of reported data.

There was a mutual exchange of nicknames, Bob and Jim and mutual exchange of Title Last Name with Mr,
Mrs, Dr as titles.

Variation in address forms depends on solidarity, power and intimacy:

Non-reciprocal patterns are governed by age and occupational status.

Reciprocal patterns, a in the use of Title Last Name and First Name, are governed by a continuum that ranges
from acquaintance to intimacy.
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Brown and Ford combined the two patterns into 8 subpatterns:

1. title alone 2. LN alone 3. Multiple names, etc.

In these patterns, First Name is roughly analogous to ‘Tu’, and Title Last Name is roughly analogous to ‘Vous’.

Time of relationship determines which address term to use. In the beginning of conversation, participants may
use title last name. As the conversation goes on, they may use just first name. Once a speaker has begun using
the first name, he cannot go back to title and last name.

Ervin Trip study (1972)

She used a different approach to tackle the American English Address Form Use.

She finds valid a competent adult member of a western American academic community.

She has developed a model for investigating address forms called ‘flow chart model’.

Her model is flawed in that her chart leads us to title, Mr., Mrs, or Miss plus an empty last name (ibid)

While it is normal to address a physician as Doctor or a priest as Father, it is odd to address someone as just
Mrs. (see Fasold 1990)

Bates and Benigni study (1995)

They used a modified version of Brown and Galiman questionnaire.

They came up with the fact that ‘voi’ like ‘tu’ is used in some rural area in Italy, ‘lei’ is used as ‘vous’. Neither
age nor solidarity counts. Only age counts in Italy.

III. Criticism
The description of the European and American address system is flawed in that it lacks representativeness. A
great amount of variation characterizes the address behavior of American and European speakers. In this
respect, Fasold (1990, p.18) pointed out that “there is considerable variation of pronoun choice based on the
background of the speaker.” While Brown and Gilman (1960) confessed that there is a great deal of variation
across languages, their description of the European address system is blind to the differences among individuals
whose linguistic behavior is governed by such factors as social class, age, sex and the like.

References:

Brown, R. and Ford, M.(1961) Address in American English. Journal of abnormal and social
psychology 62: 375-385.

Brown, R. and Gilman, A. (1960) The pronoun of power and solidarity. In Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.),
Style in language. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 253-276.

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 Ervin-Tripp, Susan (1986) On sociolinguistic rules: Alternation and co-occurrences. In John J. Gumperz
and Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication. Oxford, U.K.:
Blackwell, pp. 213-250.

Fasold, R. 1900. The Socioinguistics of Language. Oxford: Blackwell.

Richards J.C. & Schmidt R. (1992). The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied
Linguistics. London: Longman Group UK Limited.

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