Personal and non-personal forms of address in three contiguous Romance languages: sociolinguistic approach and gender implications
In this action, I investigate the use of the address forms in European Portuguese (‘tu-você’-nominal forms), Peninsular Spanish (‘tú-usted’), and French from France and from Belgium (‘tu-vous’). In spite of the existence of relatively similar forms due to their Latin origin, the use of these forms differs considerably across the three languages and their varieties, thus making it difficult to study them, as well as to translate or teach them.
Address forms go beyond a simple matter of linguistics. They are a crucial linguistic component to signal the social position or socially hierarchical relationship between interlocutors. Address forms provide information about a number of features related to the speakers and interlocutors (age, sociocultural level, gender, etc.), the type of relationship they share (e.g., close friends vs. distant acquaintances), and their relative social roles (e.g., boss vs. employee). The analysis of these forms might reveal social differences in terms of hierarchy or distance that show inequalities, for example, gender differences: Do men and women use address forms in the same way? Are these forms differently used when addressing a man or a woman, for instance in advertising? Social inequalities are not only evidenced in actions, they are also present in languages.
In DE-PERSONAlisation, I seek to analyse the wide range of variables that influence the speakers to choose a specific form of address or alternative ‘non-personal’ strategies (e.g., impersonal constructions), with the aim to draw an accurate picture of speakers’ practices in real situations.
« Le langage n’est jamais innocent » (R. Barthes)