Choice of address terms in conversational setting

Abstract

A choice of an address term signals the relationship between language and society and how a person imagines his/her relationship with the addressee within this society. Address terms, therefore, provides sociolinguistic information about the interlocutors as well as pragmatic aspect of the situation. Previous research have focused on the effect of power and solidarity in the choice of address terms. This study, on the other hand, focuses on the address terms used during spontaneous conversation taking place in a no-power situation. The primary concern of the study is to identify the potential effects of a bilingual situation and a different culture. This study investigated the address terms school children use in a reciprocal situation, which are further analyzed regarding the potential effect of age, gender and being monolingual or bilingual in this issue. For this purpose, the group conversations of 56 monolingual Turkish speaking and 48 monolingual Turkish-Danish speaking children were analyzed. The address terms are coded and classified as emerged from the data. The results have shown that monolingual children use a great variety of address terms while bilingual children dwell on first names more frequently. Choice of address forms are governed by politeness, and positive and negative face. The results will lead to awareness-raising on pragmatic aspects of conversations and social relationship and will have implications on educational context especially in bilingual settings.