Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi dialect) Hessah Aba-alalaa SOAS, University of London Teaching and Learning (Im)Politeness Conference 08/07/2013
Address Terms in Saudi Arabic
(Najdi dialect)
Hessah Aba-alalaa
SOAS, University of London
Teaching and Learning (Im)Politeness Conference
08/07/2013
Outline
Research aims and objectives
Indexicality and Reflexivity
Forms of address
Stereotypes of indexicality
Kinship System vs. Kinship Behaviour
Metaphoric Kinship
The research theme
Methodology
Quantitative data
Results, discussion
Conclusion 2
Research aims and objectives
• Reconceptualization of the notion of politeness as an emergent
property of interaction: Watts (2003), Locher (2004), Arundale
(2006), Agha (2007) and Cook (1998, 2008).
• This study investigates the norms of address in Najdi dialect
(central province of Saudi Arabia).
• Draws on Asif Agha’s work on indexicality and reflexivity.
• Highlight the Najdis’ ideologies of normative use.
• Relate to politeness theory.
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Indexicality and Reflexivity
• According to Agha (2007:14) linguistic signs – and other kinds
of signs – bear indexical meanings that resonate with the social
and cultural frames of particular groups of users.
• Agha (2007: 283) argues ‘to treat stereotypes of indexicality as
reflexive models having specific social domains of evaluators
as their provenance’.
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Forms of address
• Agha (2007: 38) states that forms of address are stereotypically social uses of language that basically depends on widely shared ideological models of language use that assign particular social significance to patterns of deictic usage.
• Referring to addressee is assigning the person referred to by an utterance to the interactional role of the addressee-of-utterance.
• Its default origo is the one speaking and its focus the one referred to as addressee.
• Stereotypically typified, society internally, as indexing a relation to addressee (e.g. deference/intimacy).
• Characterological figure of speaker behaviour (e.g. female/male, upper/lower class), Agha (2007: 280).
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Stereotypes of Indexicality
• According to Agha ( 2007), Brown and Gilman (1960)
investigated stereotypes of indexicality.
• However, they reported these stereotypes of indexicality as
“facts about ‘usage’ mediated by the inherent ‘semantic’ of
pronouns (conceptualized as coding relationships between
pronoun lexemes and social effects)” (Agha, 2007: 283).
• Yet Agha (2007: 283) claims that these effects are not inherent
but are “reflexive models having specific social domains of
evaluators as their provenance” and are therefore not
universally used for studying societies.
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Kinship system vs. Kinship behaviour
• Agha (2007: 340) argues that a theory of kinship must move
beyond the traditional concept of the kinship system which is
based on a genealogical foundation and believed to exist in
every society.
• Agha (2007:342) suggests to focus on how the kinship
relations are preformed through the usage of the kin terms and
how these relations are construed.
• This is what Agha calls kinship behaviour.
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Metaphoric Kinship
• Agha (2007: 342) pointed out that the major difficulty with the
genealogical concept of kinship term is the metaphoric usage
of kinship term which contradicts the genealogical facts. For
example the usage of kinship term to address a stranger– Agha
(2007) called this the tropic use of the kinship terms.
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The research theme
• The role of interactional variables: gender, age and economic
social class analysis.
• Najdi norms of deference versus intimacy.
• In three main social contexts: Among family, At work and
On the street.
• The analysis of the users stereotypes (the respondents’ choices
of preferred address terms).
• How these stereotypes frame a relationship with the others.
• This presentation will present some significant results of the
association between the gender of the respondents and the
users stereotypes among the family members.
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Methodology
Mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods are applied.
1. A questionnaire which replicates the one used by Braun
(1988), adapted for this study and translated into Arabic, was
sent online to people in the central province of Saudi Arabia.
2. Interviews with the respondents who took part in the
questionnaire.
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Quantitative data
• The questionnaire collected self-reported use of terms of
address by 318 native speakers of Najdi dialect.
• According to Hill et al.(1986) although self-reported
questionnaire data are considered less real than data of the
instances of actual speech “using self-reported data enables us
to obtain more stereotypic responses” (Hill et al., 1986: 353).
• Agha (2007) states questionnaires are valuable sources of data
on stereotypes of use which provides a basis for evaluating the
social distribution of the stereotypes in use across a population
of speakers, since, in such a technique, the demographic
characteristics of each participant are known (Agha, 2007:
305).
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The results
The most frequent terms of address (TOA)
• Kinship terms (KT) were reported to address the parents,
grandfathers, male/female cousins and parents-in-law.
• The honorific term (HF) Ṭal Omrek ‘May God give you long
life’ was reported to address the parents and grandfathers more
than the other family members.
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The results
Fathers Mothers Grandfathers Fathers-in-law Mothers-in-law Male Cousins Female cousins
KT 66% 82% 65% 30% 31% 33% 34%
HF 32% 17% 23% 6% 3% 0% 0%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
Reported KT & HF by the respondents to
address family members
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The results
Gender and TOA choices association
• KT was reported by the female respondents more than the
males to address their parents and grandfathers.
• KT was reported by the male respondents more than the
females to address their male/female cousins.
• HF was reported by the male respondents more than the
females to address their parents and grandfathers.
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The results
Addressing Fathers
• Female respondents commonly reported actual use of the KT
Yuba ‘Dad’ to address their fathers more than the males.
• Male respondents commonly reported HF Ṭal Omrek ‘May
God give you long life’ to address their fathers more than the
females.
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The results
Addressing Mothers
• Female respondents commonly reported actual usage of the
KT Yumma ‘Mum’ to address their mothers more than the
males.
• Male respondents commonly reported HF Ṭal Omrek to
address their mothers more than the females.
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The results
Addressing Grandfathers
• Female respondents commonly reported actual use of the KT
Jadi ‘Grandpa’ to address their grandfathers more than the
males.
• Male respondents commonly reported HF Ṭal Omrek to
address their grandfathers more than the females.
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The results
KT HF KT HF KT HF
Fathers Mothers Grandfathers
Females 79% 18% 94% 7% 65% 16%
Males 53% 45% 71% 27% 64% 29%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Reported TOA by male and female respondents to address their parents and grandfathers
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Discussion
• According to the family hierarchy, the origo of the address
terms in these asymmetrical dyads is an inferior family
member (the respondent) and their focus is a superior
family member (parents and grandfathers).
• Therefore, both of the terms may stereotypically index
deference.
• According to Agha (2007:322) honorific expressions assign
specific contextual variables as default foci of deference
relative to co-text:
bystander focus, addressee focus or referent focus
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Discussion
• The male respondents’ choice of HF more than the females, to
address their parents and grandfathers indexes [addressee focus]
deference.
• The actual usage of KT by the males to address the members
of their families may index intimacy to the addressee.
• The stereotypic intimacy indexicality of KT manifests in the
male respondents preference of the actual usage of the KTs Ibn
alamm ‘son of uncle’ Bint alamm ‘daughter of uncle’ to
address their male/female cousins.
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Discussion
Male cousins Female cousins
Females 21% 24%
Males 45% 44%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
Actual usage of KT to address males/female cousins
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Discussion
• The actual usage of KT by the female respondents to address
the members of their families indexes [addressee focus]
deference.
• This stereotypic deference indexicality of KT usage among
family members manifests in the female respondents’ choice
of the tropic usage of the KT which denotes the paternal uncle
Ammy to address fathers-in-law and the KT which denotes
paternal/maternal aunt Ammah/Xalah to address mothers-in-
law.
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Discussion
Fathers-in-law Mothers-in-law
Females 87% 89%
Males 65% 63%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Tropic usage of KT to address parents-in-law
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Conclusion
• There are different norms of showing deference to the family
members between males and females co-exist society
internally in the Najdi society.
• This variation represent different relational designations
(deference vs. intimacy) based on the gender of the speaker.
• The tropic use of KT to address parents-in-law by the females
and the normalization of this tropic use to show deference
support Agha’s (2007) claim of the mistaken genealogical
concept which Kinship systems is based on.
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