Title: The social dynamics of pronominal systems : a comparative approach /
Authors: Bouissac, Paul
Year: 2019
Subjects: Grammar, Comparative and general Pronoun; Forms of address; Interpersonal communication; Speech and social status; Sociolinguistics; Forms of address; Grammar, Comparative and general Pronoun; Interpersonal communication; Sociolinguistics; Speech and social status; Soziolinguistik; Pronomen
Abstract: Personal pronouns have a special status in languages. As indexical tools they are the means by which languages and persons intimately interface with each other within a particular social structure. Pronouns involve more than mere grammatical functions in live communication acts. They variously signal the gender of speakers as parts of utterances or in their anaphoric roles. They also prominently indicate with a range of degrees the kind of social relationships that hold between speakers from intimacy to indifference, from dominance to submission, and from solidarity to hostility. Languages greatly vary in the number of pronouns and other address terms they offer to their users with a distinct range of social values. Children learn their relative position in their family and in their society through the "correct" use of pronouns. When languages come into contact because of population migrations or through the process of translation, pronouns are the most sensitive zone of tension both psychologically and politically. This volume endeavours to probe the comparative pragmatics of pronominal systems as social processes in a representative set from different language families and cultural areas.
Contents: Introduction / Paul Bouissac -- 1. N-T-V, a framework for the analysis of social dynamics in address pronouns / Manuela Cook -- 2. When we means you: The social meaning of English pseudo-inclusive personal pronouns / Nick Wilson -- 3. A socio-semiotic approach to the personal pronominal system in Brazilian Portuguese / Monica Rector and Marcelo da Silva Amorim -- 4. Address pronouns and alternatives: Challenges and solutions when translating between two polycentric languages (English and Portuguese) / Manuela Cook -- 5. T-V address practices in Italian: Diachronic, diatopic, and diastratic analyses / Costantino Maeder and Romane Werner -- 6. Forms and functions of the French personal pronouns in social interactions and literary texts / Paul Bouissac -- 7. The dynamics of Nepali pronominal distinctions in familiar, casual and formal relationships / George van Driem -- 8. The Chinese pronominal system and identity construction via self-reference / Bing Xue and Shaojie Zhang -- 9. Pronouns in an 18th century Chinese novel: What they tell us about social dynamics / Cher Leng LEE -- 10. Me, myself, and ako: Locating the self in taglish tweets / Dana Osborne -- 11. Address, reference and sequentiality in Indonesian conversation / Michael C. Ewing and Dwi Noverini Djenar -- 12. Pronouns in affinal avoidance registers: Evidence from the Aslian languages (Austroasiatic, Malay Peninsula) / Nicole Kruspe and Niclas Burenhult.