Borrowing of address forms for dimensions of social relation in a contact-induced multilingual community

Kamaludin Yusra; Yuni Budi Lestari; Jane Simpson

doi:10.1515/pr-2021-0022

Article

Borrowing of address forms for dimensions of social relation in a contact-induced multilingual community

Kamaludin Yusra
Kamaludin Yusra is a lecturer at the English Education Department, School of Education, The University of Mataram, Indonesia. He obtained his PhD in Sociolinguistics from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 2006. His research interests are in sociolinguistics, language teaching, curriculum, and materials development.
, Yuni Budi Lestari
Yuni Budi Lestari is a lecturer at the English Education Department, School of Education, The University of Mataram, Indonesia. She obtained her PhD in Language Planning and Policy at the School of Education, the University of Queensland, Australia in 2020.
and Jane Simpson
Jane Simpson is a professor of Linguistics at the College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, Australia. She obtained her PhD from MIT, Massachusetts, USA, in 1983. Her research interests cover a range of linguistic expertise including description of Southeast Asian languages.

Published/Copyright: August 31, 2022

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Submit Manuscript Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Journal of Politeness Research Volume 19 Issue 1

Abstract

Address forms have been studied in various contexts, and it has been assumed that the determining dimensions are solidarity, including closeness and equality, and power, including distance and hierarchy. Solidarity is indexed with singular forms while power is represented with plural forms. Using ethnography of communication framework, this study enriches this discussion by examining the use of address forms by Bima people in a multilingual community in Bima, Indonesia, where Bima, Indonesian and other languages in contact have been used for centuries. Address forms including speaker reference forms were identified and classified in 1,250 h of data collected through observation, interviews, elicitation, and recordings of conversation. The study shows that address forms from languages in contact with Bima have been borrowed to represent dimensions within the solidarity-power continuum including intimacy, closeness, equality, hierarchy and respect. The Bima forms are used to exercise traditional solidarity-power relations, but the borrowed forms of Arab, Bugis, Chinese, English, and Makassarese origins are used to negotiate more intimate, close, equal and respectful relations within the social hierarchy. Using the native and the borrowed forms according to referent’s age, gender, status, and contexts, speakers construct different social spaces of intimacy, closeness, equality, hierarchy, respect, and power.

Keywords: address form; Bima; power; social dimension; solidarity

Corresponding author: Kamaludin Yusra, School of Education, University of Mataram, Mataram, Indonesia, E-mail: kamaludin@unram.ac.id

About the authors

Kamaludin Yusra

Kamaludin Yusra is a lecturer at the English Education Department, School of Education, The University of Mataram, Indonesia. He obtained his PhD in Sociolinguistics from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 2006. His research interests are in sociolinguistics, language teaching, curriculum, and materials development.

Yuni Budi Lestari

Yuni Budi Lestari is a lecturer at the English Education Department, School of Education, The University of Mataram, Indonesia. She obtained her PhD in Language Planning and Policy at the School of Education, the University of Queensland, Australia in 2020.

Jane Simpson

Jane Simpson is a professor of Linguistics at the College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, Australia. She obtained her PhD from MIT, Massachusetts, USA, in 1983. Her research interests cover a range of linguistic expertise including description of Southeast Asian languages.

References

Afful, Joseph Benjamin Archibald. 2006. Non-kinship address terms in Akan: A sociolinguistic study of language use in Ghana. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 27(4). 275–289. https://doi.org/10.2167/jmmd425.1.Search in Google Scholar

Agha, Asif. 1994. Honorification. Annual Review of Anthropology 23. 277–302. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.23.100194.001425.Search in Google Scholar

Allerton, David J. 1996. Proper names and definite descriptions with the same reference: A pragmatic choice for language users. Journal of Pragmatics 25(5). 621–633. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(94)00103-0.Search in Google Scholar

Alrabaa, Sami. 19851985. The use of address pronouns by Egyptian adults. Journal of Pragmatics 9. 645–657. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(85)90057-8.Search in Google Scholar

Bogoch, Bryna. 1994. Power, distance, and solidarity: Models of professional-client interaction in an Israeli legal aid setting. Discourse & Society 5(1). 65–88. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926594005001004.Search in Google Scholar

Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511813085Search in Google Scholar

Brown, Roger & Marguerite Ford. 1961. Address in American English. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 32(6). 369–385.10.1037/h0042862Search in Google Scholar

Brown, Roger & Albert Gilman. 1960. The pronouns of power and solidarity. In Thomas Albert Sebeok (ed.), Style in language, 253–276. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.1515/9783110805376.252Search in Google Scholar

Bull, Peter & Anita Fetzer. 2006. Who are we and who are you? The strategic use of forms of address in political interviews. Text & Talk-An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse Communication Studies 26(1). 3–37.10.1515/TEXT.2006.002Search in Google Scholar

Chambert-Loir, Herbert & Siti Maryam Rahmat Salahuddin. 1999. Bo’ Sangaji Kai. Catatan Kerajaan Bima [Kingly Book: The chronicle of the Bima Kingdom]. Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia.Search in Google Scholar

Çiftçi, Hatime & Camilla Vasquez. 2020. Co-constructed oppositional stance and facework in an office hour interaction. Journal of Politeness Research 16(2). 193–216. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2017-0013.Search in Google Scholar

Delisle, Herlga H. 1986. Intimacy, solidarity, and distance: The pronouns of address in German. Unterrichts Praxis 19(1). 4–15.10.2307/3530857Search in Google Scholar

Dickey, Eleanor. 1997. The Ancient Greek address system and some proposed sociolinguistic universals. Language in Society 26(1). 1–13.10.1017/S0047404500019382Search in Google Scholar

Dittrich, Winand H., Thomas Johansen & Elena Kulinskaya. 2011. Norms and situational rules of address in English and Norwegian speakers. Journal of Pragmatics 43(15). 3807–3821. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2011.09.006.Search in Google Scholar

Ervin-Trip, Susan. 1972. On sociolinguistic rules: Alternation and co-occurrence. In John J. Gumperz & Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication, 213–250. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Search in Google Scholar

Foley, William Alfred. 1997. Anthropological linguistics: An introduction (Language in Society 24). Malden, MA: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Friedrich, Paul. 1972. Social context and semantic feature: The Russian pronominal usage. In John J. Gumperz & Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication, 270–300. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Search in Google Scholar

Geertz, Clifford. 1960. The religion of Java. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.Search in Google Scholar

Gumperz, John J. 1992. Contextualization revisited. In Peter Auer & Aldo Di Luzio (eds.), The contextualization of language (Pragmatics and beyond new series 22), 39–53. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.10.1075/pbns.22.04gumSearch in Google Scholar

Hanks, William F. 1999. Indexicality. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9(1/2). 124–126.10.1525/jlin.1999.9.1-2.124Search in Google Scholar

Hymes, Dell. 2005. Models of the interaction of language and social life: Toward a descriptive theory. In Scott F. Kiesling & Christina Bratt Paulston (eds.), Intercultural discourse and communication: The essential readings (Linguistics: The essential readings 1), 4–16. Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing.10.1002/9780470758434.ch1Search in Google Scholar

Ja’far, Syamsinas. 2007. Bentuk, Fungsi dan Makna Istilah Kekerabatan Bahasa Bima [Forms, functions and meanings in the Bima address forms]. Linguistika Kultura 1(2). 117–129.Search in Google Scholar

Keshavarz, Mohammad Hossein. 1988. Forms of address in post-revolutionary Iranian Persian: A sociolinguistic analysis. Language in Society 17. 565–575. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500013105.Search in Google Scholar

Kramer, Cheris. 1975. Sex-related differences in address systems. Anthropological Linguistics 17(5). 198–210.Search in Google Scholar

Kroger, Rolf O. & Linda A. Wood. 1992. Are rules of address universal? IV: Comparison of Chinese, Korean, Greek, and German usage. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 23. 148–162. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022192232002.Search in Google Scholar

Kulbayeva, Aisulu. 2020. Balancing power and solidarity through indirectness: A case study of Russian and Kazakh meeting chairs. Journal of Politeness Research 16(2). 159–191. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2017-0054.Search in Google Scholar

Kullavanijaya, Pranee. 2000. Power and intimacy: A contradiction in a Thai personal pronoun. In Oceanic linguistics special publications, 29, Grammatical analysis: Morphology, syntax, and semantics, 80–86. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20000142 (accessed 10 September 2020).Search in Google Scholar

Lucy, John Arthur. 1993. Reflexive language and the human disciplines. In John Arthur Lucy (ed.), Reflexive language: Reported speech and metapragmatics, 9–32. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511621031.003Search in Google Scholar

Millie, Andrew. 2009. Conclusions: Promoting mutual respect and empathy. In Andrew Millie (ed.), Securing respect: Behavioural expectations and anti-social behaviour in the UK, 267–276. Bristol: Bristol University Press & Polity Press.10.2307/j.ctt9qgspr.17Search in Google Scholar

Moreno, Maria Cristobalina. 2002. The address system in the Spanish of the Golden Age. Journal of Pragmatics 34(1). 15–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00074-6.Search in Google Scholar

Mousavi, S. Hamzeh. 2020. Terms of address and fictive kinship politeness in Lori. Journal of Politeness Research 16(2). 217–247. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2017-0032.Search in Google Scholar

Nickerson, Catherine & Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini. 1996. At the intersection between grammar and pragmatics: A contrastive study of personal pronouns and other forms of address in Dutch and Italian. Language Sciences 18(3–4). 743–764. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00045-9.Search in Google Scholar

Oyetade, Solomon Oluwole. 1995. A sociolinguistic analysis of address forms in Yoruba. Language in Society 24(4).10.1017/S004740450001900XSearch in Google Scholar

Parkinson, Amber & John Hajek. 2004. Keeping it all in the family: Tu, lei, and voi. A study of address pronoun use in Italian. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics Supplement Series 18(1). 97–114. https://doi.org/10.1075/aralss.18.07par.Search in Google Scholar

Pathak, Ramesh S. & Vijay K. Jain. 1996. Semantics of the pronominal usage in Hindi. South Asian Language Review 6(1). 1–15.Search in Google Scholar

Siefkes, Martin. 2010. Power in society, economy, and mentality: Towards a semiotic theory of power. Semiotica 2010(181). 225–261. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.2010.042.Search in Google Scholar

Silverstein, Michael. 1979. Language structure and linguistic ideology. In Paul R. Clyne, William F. Hanks & Carol L. Hofbauer (eds.), The elements: A parasession on linguistic units and levels, 193–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Search in Google Scholar

Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23(3–4). 193–229. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00013-2.Search in Google Scholar

Tannen, Deborah. 1993. The relativity of linguistic strategies: Rethinking power and solidarity in gender and dominance. In Deborah Tannen (ed.), Gender and conversational interaction (Oxford studies in sociolinguistics 4), 165–188. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1007/978-1-349-92299-4_12Search in Google Scholar

Wales, Kathleen M. 1983. Thou and you in Early Modern English: Brown and Gilman re-appraised. Studia Linguistica 37(2). 107–125. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9582.1983.tb00316.x.Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2021-05-25

Accepted: 2022-05-18

Published Online: 2022-08-31

Published in Print: 2023-02-23

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2021-0022

Keywords for this article

address form; Bima; power; social dimension; solidarity