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Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems
Address term systems and their diachronic developments are discussed in a wide range of European languages in this volume. Most chapters focus on pronominal systems, and in particular on the criteria that govern the choices between a more intimate and a more distant or polite pronoun, as for instance thou and you in Early Modern English, vos and vuestra merced in sixteenth century Spanish or du and Sie in Modern German. Several contributions deal with situations in which more than two terms can be used and several also note co-occurrence patterns of pronominal and nominal forms of address. The volume provides a multivaried picture of the evolutionary lines of address term systems and a representative range of current approaches from pragmatics and sociolinguistics to conversation analysis. It is thus a timely contribution to the rapidly expanding field of historical pragmatics.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 107] 2003. vii, 441 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 4 September 2006
Published online on 4 September 2006
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
- Preface | pp. vii–7
- 1. Diachronic perspectives on address term systems: IntroductionAndreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen | pp. 1–25
- 2. The T/V pronouns in later Middle English LiteratureDavid Burnley | pp. 27–45
- 3. The use of tu/vus in the Anglo-Norman Seinte ResureccionTony Hunt | pp. 47–59
- 4. “And if ye wol nat so, my lady sweete, thanne preye I thee, [...].”: Forms of address in Chaucer's Knight's TaleThomas Honegger | pp. 61–84
- 5. From pragmatics to grammar: Tracing the development of respect in the history of the German pronouns of addressHorst J. Simon | pp. 85–123
- 6. The system of Czech bound address forms until 1700Michael Betsch | pp. 125–146
- 7. Family first: Address and subscription formulae in English family correspondence from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuryMinna Nevala | pp. 147–176
- 8. Spanish forms of address in the sixteenth centuryPaola Bentivoglio | pp. 177–191
- 9. The co-occurrence of nominal and pronominal address froms in the Shakespeare Corpus: Who says thou or you to whom?Ulrich Busse | pp. 193–221
- 10. Pronouns and nominal address in Shakespearean English: A socio-affective markings system in transitionGabriella Mazzon | pp. 223–249
- 11. Pronominal usage in Shakespeare: Between sociolinguistics and conversation analysisDieter Stein | pp. 251–307
- 12. You and thou in Early Modern English dialogues: Patterns of usageTerry Walker | pp. 309–342
- 13. Rectifying a standard deficiency: Second-person pronominal distinction in varieties of EnglishRaymond Hickey | pp. 345–374
- 14. Demonstrative pronouns in addressing and referring FinnishEeva-Leena Seppänen | pp. 375–399
- 15. The German address system: Binary and scalar at onceRaymond Hickey | pp. 401–425
- Index of subjects | pp. 427–430
- Index of names | pp. 431–438
- Index of languages | pp. 439–441
“In a way the book is almost too good. Being thorough in the subjects it touches upon and showing internal consistency, it is very nearly a textbook that one could wish for a measure of rewriting in order to go the whole way and make it really so.”
Margaret J-M Sonmez, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, on Linguist List 14-1841.
“This book is a varied and absorbing collection which is a must for every researcher with interest in TOA theories.”
Daniel Z. Kadar, Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary
“In conclusion, I would like to say that 'Diachronic Perspectives' is a real asset to the study of address forms. Many different perspectives are brought together and the introduction provides a comprehensive and clear overview of the field. The editors put effort into relating papers to each other both by describing general issues in their introduction as well as by adding cross-references to papers with the same topic. They give a clear overview of recuring themes such as motivations in the choice of primary sources and the interpretation of pronoun switching, retractable address systems and norm deviation. The book also reveals problematic issues in address term research such as the issue of possible generalizations on data research.”
Suzanne Aalberse, Amsterdam, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, Band 127:2 (2005)
Cited by (42)
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2026. Forms of address as politic behaviour in seventeenth-century Dutch
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Lee, Cher Leng & Siyu Zhu
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2025. “If this be Irish gratitude, I could wish myself a Frenchman”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 26:3 ► pp. 354 ff.
Yampolskaya, Sonya
2025. Grammar in the service of pragmatics. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
Guilherme, Ana
Kretzenbacher, Heinz L. & Susanne Hensel-Börner
Zieliński, Andrzej
Mohammed, Sara Jamal
Bączkowska, Anna
Guarin, Daniel
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2021. Dear, my dear, my lady, your ladyship. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 31:1 ► pp. 33 ff.
Moyna, María Irene
Bizzoni, Yuri, Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb, Peter Fankhauser & Elke Teich
Wiśniewska-Przymusińska, Malwina
Bouissac, Paul
2019. Introduction. In The Social Dynamics of Pronominal Systems [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 304], ► pp. 1 ff.
Foster, Daniel, Suzanne Aalberse & Wessel Stoop
2019. Examining Twitter as a source for address research using Colombian Spanish. In It’s not all about you [Topics in Address Research, 1], ► pp. 75 ff.
Goertler, Senta
Kádár, Dániel Z. & Kim Ridealgh
Lee, Cher Leng
Beeching, Kate, Chiara Ghezzi & Piera Molinelli
2018. Introduction. In Positioning the Self and Others [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 292], ► pp. 1 ff.
Molinelli, Piera
2018. Sociocultural and linguistic constraints in address choice from Latin to Italian. In Positioning the Self and Others [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 292], ► pp. 51 ff.
Al-Qudah, Mahmoud, E. Masal, I. Önder, S. Beşoluk, H. Çalişkan & E. Demirhan
Brownlees, Nicholas
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
2022. Historical sociolinguistics. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 756 ff.
Brinton, Laurel J.
Zago, Raffaele
2015. “That’s none of your business, Sy”. In Participation in Public and Social Media Interactions [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 256], ► pp. 183 ff.
Kádár, Dániel Z.
Kádár, Dániel Z.
Jucker, Andreas H. & Irma Taavitsainen
Mele-Marrero, Margarita & Francisco Alonso-Almeida
COVENEY, AIDAN
Xing, Janet Zhiqun
2008. Review of Kádár (2007): Terms of (Im)politeness: A Study of the Communicational Properties of Traditional Chinese (Im)polite Terms of Address. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 9:2 ► pp. 315 ff.
Jucker, Andreas H.
Jucker, Andreas H.
Sönmez, Margaret J-M
Hickey, Raymond
Hickey, Raymond
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
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