Article published In: Address from a World Perspective
Edited by Heinz L. Kretzenbacher, Catrin Norrby and Jane Warren
[Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 29:2] 2006
► pp. 16.1–16.17
Address pronouns in French
Variation within and outside the workplace
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
Published online: 1 January 2006
https://doi.org/10.2104/aral0616
https://doi.org/10.2104/aral0616
This article examines speakers’ perceptions of and attitudes towards address pronoun usage in Paris and Toulouse. The data on which this article is based come from a comparative project based at the University of Melbourne, Address in some western European languages, and were generated in focus groups in both Paris and Toulouse, as well as interviews in Paris. It is generally accepted that in France the informal pronominal address form tu is used within the family, with close friends and with youngsters, and that the formal address form vous is used by adults when addressing strangers. The findings presented here indicate that, outside these general tendencies, individual preferences and negotiation can inform the choice of address pronoun in different ways both within and outside the workplace, with individual variation more common outside the work domain.
References (17)
Béal, C. 1989. ‘“On se tutoie?” Second person pronominal usage and terms of address in contemporary French’. Australian review of applied linguistics 12 (1): 61–82.
Brown, R.; Gilman, A. 1960. ‘The pronouns of power and solidarity’. In Style in language, edited by Sebeok, T.A. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Clyne, M.; Kretzenbacher, L.; Norrby, C.; Schüpbach, D. 2006. ‘Perceptions of variation and change in German and Swedish address’. Journal of sociolinguistics 10 (3): 283–315.
Coffen, B. 2002. Histoire culturelle des pronoms d’adresse. Vers une typologie des systèmes allocutoires dans les langues romanes. Paris: Honoré Champion.
2003. ‘Rôle attribué aux pronoms d’adresse dans la construction identitaire individuelle’. Paper presented at the Colloquium Pronoms de 2e personne et formes d’adresse dans les langues d’Europe, 6-8 March 2003, Institut Cervantes, Paris.
Crumley, B. 2006. ‘Pardon your French. Hit or miss? A formal debate forms over the correct form of address’. Time Europe, 30 April 2006.
Gardner-Chloros, P. 1991. ‘Ni tu ni vous: principes et paradoxes dans l’emploi des pronoms d’allocution en français contemporain’. Journal of French language studies 1 (1): 139–155.
Halmøy, O. 1999. ‘Le vouvoiement en français: forme non-marquée de la seconde personne du singulier’. In XIV Skandinaviska Romanistkongressen, edited by Nystedt, J. Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockhomiensis.
Havu, E. 2005. ‘Quand les Français tutoient-ils?’ Paper presented at the XVIe Congrès des romanistes scandinaves (Copenhagen, 25-27 August 2005). Accessed September 4, 2006. Available from: [URL].
2006. ‘L’emploi des pronoms d’adresse en français: étude sociolinguistique et comparaison avec le finnois’. In Dialogic language use. Dimensions du dialogisme. Dialogischer Sprachgebrauch, edited by I. Taavitsainen, I.; Härmä J.; Korhonen, J. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
Hughson, J. 2001. Le tu et le vous: étude sociolinguistique dans la banlieue parisienne. Diplôme d’études approfondies, Nanterre: Université Paris-X.
Kretzenbacher, H.L.; Clyne, M.; Schüpbach, D. 2006. ‘Pronominal address in German: Rules, anarchy and embarrassment potential’. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 29 (2): 17.1–17.18. .
Kallmeyer, W. 2003. ‘Sagen Sie bitte du zu mir: Werner Kallmeyer, Soziolinguist am Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim, über die Kunst der richtigen Anrede. Das Gespräch führte C. Schmitt’. Die Zeit, 27. Accessed July 2, 2003. Available from: [URL].
Maley, C. 1974. The pronouns of address in Modern Standard French. University of Mississippi, MS: University of Mississippi Romance Monographs.
Cited by (16)
Cited by 16 other publications
den Hartog, Maria, Patricia Sánchez Carrasco, Gert-Jan Schoenmakers, Lotte Hogeweg & Helen de Hoop
den Hartog, Maria, Marjolein van Hoften & Gert-Jan Schoenmakers
2022. Pronouns of address in recruitment advertisements from multinational companies. Linguistics in the Netherlands 39 ► pp. 39 ff.
Ollier, Joseph, Marcia Nißen & Florian von Wangenheim
Schüpbach, Doris, John Hajek, Heinz L. Kretzenbacher & Catrin Norrby
Cook, Manuela
2019. N-V-T, a framework for the analysis of social dynamics in address pronouns. In The Social Dynamics of Pronominal Systems [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 304], ► pp. 17 ff.
Moody, Stephen J.
Levshina, Natalia
Zwisler, Joshua James
COVENEY, AIDAN
van Compernolle, Rémi A.
Kretzenbacher, Heinz L., Michael Clyne & Doris Schüpbach
Kretzenbacher, Heinz L., Michael Clyne & Doris Schüpbach
Norrby, Catrin Elisabeth
Norrby, Catrin Elisabeth
Weissenböck, Maria
2006. Pronouns of address in Western Ukrainian. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 29:2 ► pp. 20.1 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.