Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 21:1 (2011) ► pp.69–83
Perceptions of national and regional standards of addressing in Germany and Austria
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 1 March 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21.1.04kre
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21.1.04kre
This article investigates the use of German forms of address in different national and regional varieties of German, as perceived by speakers of those varieties. For particular domains such as the workplace, informants report significant regional and national differences in use not only of pronominal address but also of nominal address and linguistic structures linked to addressing such as greetings. The data also confirm differences in information about and sensitivity for different national varieties between speakers of the dominant and of non-dominant varieties characteristic for asymmetrical pluricentricity.
Keywords: Greetings, Forms of address, Pluricentric languages, German, Language attitudes
References (27)
Besch, Werner (1998) Duzen, Siezen, Titulieren: Zur Anrede im Deutschen heute und gestern, 2. erg. Aufl. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Carbaugh, Donal (1996) Situating Selves: The Communication of Social Identities in American Scenes. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. BoP
Clyne, Michael (1992) Epilogue. In Michael Clyne (ed.), Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 455-466. BoP
Clyne, Michael, Heinz L. Kretzenbacher, Catrin Norrby, and Doris Schüpbach (2006) Perceptions of variation and change in German and Swedish address. Journal of Sociolinguistics10.3: 287-319.
Clyne, Michael, Catrin Norrby, and Jane Warren (2009) Language and Human Relations: Styles of Address in Contemporary Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ehlers, Klaas-Hinrich (2004) Zur Anrede mit Titeln in Deutschland, Österreich und Tschechien: Ergebnisse einer Fragebogenerhebung. Brücken. Germanistisches Jahrbuch Tschechien – Slowakei 121: 85-115.
Finkenstaedt, Thomas (1963) You and Thou : Studien zur Anrede im Englischen (mit einem Exkurs über die Anrede im Deutschen). Berlin: de Gruyter.
Howell, Richard, and Jack Klassen (1971) Contrasting „Du/Sie“ patterns in a Mennonite community. Anthropological Linguistics 13.2: 68-74.
Johnston, William M. (2001) Österreichs kulturelle Identität am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts. Neue Ansichten aus alten Begriffen. In Josef Marko and Klaus Poier (eds.), Politik, Staat und Recht im Zeitenbruch. Symposion aus Anlaß des 60. Geburtstags von Wolfgang Mantl. Wien/Köln/Weimar: Böhlau, pp. 15-33.
Kretzenbacher, Heinz L. (1991) Vom Sie zum Du – und retour? In Heinz L. Kretzenbacher and Wulf Segebrecht, Vom Sie zum Du — mehr als eine neue Konvention? Antworten auf die Preisfrage der Deutschen Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung vom Jahr 1989. Hamburg/Zürich: Luchterhand, pp. 9-77.
. (2010) „Man ordnet ja bestimmte Leute irgendwo ein für sich...“: Anrede und soziale Deixis. Deutsche Sprache. Zeitschrift für Theorie, Praxis, Dokumentation 38.1: 1-18.
Kretzenbacher, Heinz L., Michael Clyne, and Doris Schüpbach (2006) Pronominal address in German: Rules, anarchy and embarrassment potential. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics29.2: 17.1-17.18.
Kuntzsch, Lutz (2004) “Genosse Botschafter – Liebe Kollegin – Achtung, Gartenfreunde”: Anredeformen und Anredeverhalten in der DDR. In Ruth Reiher and Antje Baumann (eds.), Vorwärts und nichts vergessen. Sprache in der DDR: Was war, was ist, was bleibt. Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, pp. 148-158.
Liebscher, Grit, Jennifer Daily-O’Cain, Mareike Müller, and Tetyana Reichert (2010) Negotiating identities through pronouns of address in an immigrant community. Pragmatics20.3: 375-400. BoP
Muhr, Rudolf (2008) The pragmatics of a pluricentric language: A comparison between Austrian German and German German. In Klaus P. Schneider and Anne Barron (eds.), Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 211-244.
Norrby, Catrin (2006) Variation in Swedish address practices. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics29.2: 18.1-18.15.
Schneider, Klaus P., and Anne Barron (2008) Where pragmatics and dialectology meet: Introducing variational pragmatics. In Klaus P. Schneider and Anne Barron (eds.), Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 1-32. BoP
Soukup. Barbara (2009) Dialect Use as Interaction Strategy: A Sociolinguistic Study of Contextualization, Speech Perception, and Language Attitudes in Austria. Wien: Braumüller.
Sproß, Elfriede M. (2001) Das Du-Wort. Zur Anrede im Umgang mit anderen. Graz, University, Ph.D. Thesis.
Stoffel, Gertraut M. (1983a) Forms of address amongst German-English bilinguals in New Zealand. General Linguistics 23.2: 79-93.
. (1983b) Veränderungen und semantische Konflikte im Anredeverhalten Deutschsprachiger in Neuseeland. Muttersprache 941: 185-193.
Svennevig, Jan (1999) Getting Acquainted in Conversation: A Study of Initial Interactions. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Tönnies, Ferdinand (2010) Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundbegriffe der reinen Soziologie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (reprint of the 8th edition Leipzig: Buske 1935).
Warga, Muriel (2008) Requesting in German as a pluricentric language. In Klaus P. Schneider and Anne Barron (eds.), Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 245-266.
Cited by (7)
Cited by seven other publications
Schüpbach, Doris, John Hajek, Heinz L. Kretzenbacher & Catrin Norrby
Schüpbach, Doris, John Hajek, Heinz L. Kretzenbacher & Catrin Norrby
2023. Nominal address and introductions in three national varieties of
German. In It’s different with you [Topics in Address Research, 5], ► pp. 245 ff.
Vismans, Roel
2019. Address negotiations in Dutch emails. In It’s not all about you [Topics in Address Research, 1], ► pp. 253 ff.
Buyle, Anouk & Hendrik De Smet
Dannerer, Monika, Marianne Franz & Heike Ortner
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 november 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.
