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Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi dialect) Hessah Aba-alalaa SOAS, University of London Teaching and Learning (Im)Politeness Conference 08/07/2013
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Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

Dec 28, 2022

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Page 1: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

Address Terms in Saudi Arabic

(Najdi dialect)

Hessah Aba-alalaa

SOAS, University of London

Teaching and Learning (Im)Politeness Conference

08/07/2013

Page 2: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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

Page 3: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 4: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 5: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 6: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 7: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 8: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 9: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 10: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 11: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 12: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 13: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 14: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 15: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 16: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 17: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 18: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 19: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 20: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 21: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 22: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 23: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 24: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

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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Page 25: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

References Agha, A. (2007) Language and social relations. New York: Cambridge university

press.

Arundale, R. B. (2006) Face as relational and interactional: A communication

framework for research on face, facework, and politeness. Journal of Politeness

Research. 2193–216.

Braun, F. (1988) Terms of address: problems of patterns and usage in various

languages and cultures. Berlin, New York and Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.

Brown, R. & Gilman, A. (1960) 'The pronouns of Power and Solidarity', in T. A.

Sebeok (ed.) Style in language. New York: Wiley. pp. 253–276.

Cook, H. M. (1998) Situational meaning of the Japanese social deixis. The mixed use

of the masu and plain forms. Journal of linguistic anthropology. 8 (1), 87–110.

Cook, H. M. (2008) Socializing Identities Through Speech Style: Learners of Japanese

As a Foreign Language. Multilingual Matters.

Hill, B. et al. (1986) Universals of linguistic politeness. Quantitative evidence from

Japanese and American English. Journal of Pragmatics. 10347–371.

Locher, M. A. (2004) Power and politeness in action: Disagreements in oral

communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Watts, R. J. (2003) Politeness. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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Page 26: Address Terms in Saudi Arabic (Najdi Dialect) and politeness theory

Thank you

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