LANGUAGE IN INDIA

ADDRESS AND REFERENCE TO WOMEN IN AN INDIAN LANGUAGE CONTEXT

M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

1. Women in India

Recently, when L. K. Advani was appointed the Deputy Prime Minister of India, an honor that he richly deserves from within his party, he quipped that although he was now the Deputy Prime Minister, he was only a deputy home minister in his home! This saying is quite common and underlies most of our thinking and conversations about women. While women are still second-class citizens in our nations, South Asia has had an unusual number of women heads of governments, in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Women in power are highly respected and feared. Day in and day out we see several cabinet ministers of Tamilnadu prostrating before Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa in public functions. As if to compensate for the negligence of ordinary women, women with political and spiritual powers are elevated to the highest pedestal in India. While address and reference to women in the ordinary language is less than respectful, address and reference to women in power equals that form that is used to address and refer to men.

2. Social-psychological Analysis of Language Use

In this paper, we list a number of non-linguistic factors that govern the choice and use of terms addressed to and referred to women in a semiurban, rural setting in an Indian language context. We distinguish between two types of factors - factors that govern the choice and use of terms to address and refer to women in one's own family and in extended families, and factors that govern these terms in contexts such as the bazaar situation where one comes into contact with relatively strangers. While in the former, the choice and use of these terms is governed by factors of kinship - real, extended and pseudo, in the latter the same is governed by a host of factors of person and social perception. The sociolinguistic description of address and reference terms in South Asian languages in general, has, so far, not iterated the kinds of social-psychological factors of person and social perception listed here. This paper tries to fill in this gap.

The presentation here is based mainly on an intuitive social-psychological analysis of language use. That is not to say, however, that the findings of this intuitive social-psychological analysis do not have corroborative empirical evidence. The empirical evidence for the use of address and reference terms in public places is easily identified in overt linguistic utterances in Indian languages, which generally bear the meanings: "Oh! It is clear who she is by the way she speaks, is dressed up, walks, argues, laughs, wears her ornaments, wears her saree", etc., etc. The evidence is made available also in utterances, "No, madam. I couldn't recognize (you) because you wore your saree differently", "because of the crowd you were in,'"etc. The utterances of the latter category are made to justify one's failure to choose the appropriate address and reference terms.

The social-psychological analysis of language use presented here is based on the author's experience thirty years ago as a shop assistant in the bazaar of a small town and as a member of a family of one of the non-Brahmin and non-vegetarian castes of the town located in Tamilnadu. His infrequent visits to the scene in the last three decades have confirmed the patterns and analysis presented here, and revealed several dynamics, also described below. Thus the chapter is based entirely on participant observation, participation in the scene as an individual belonging to it. No formal tool of any sort was used. No field notes were ever taken. The analysis is "based on remembered experiences filtered through the author's intuitive perception of what really happens in these situations."

3. The Setting

The description presented here is based on language use in a semiurban, but largely rural, capital town of a taluq forming part of Tirunelveli district, one of the southern districts of Tamilnadu, India. This is a taluq town with a representation of very many Tamil speaking Hindu castes, with a substantial Muslim population speaking only Tamil, and a bilingual community speaking Tamil and Telugu. Presently, the town also has a good number of Malayalam speakers, from Kerala that is only about five to ten miles away. A notable feature of the caste composition of the town is the singular absence of any settlement of Nadar community, (see Hardgrave (1969) for a description of this caste) within the town, a deficiency amply compensated by Nadar villages surrounding the town in almost all the direction, thus injecting an additional element of strangeness in the bazaar situation wherein even the inhabitants of the town remain strangers to one another. Again, in recent years, quite a few merchants from this community have settled down in the town. And yet they do not have their own "street."

This is a town, like many small towns of Tamilbadu, where one need not ask an individual what caste he belongs to but simply in which street the person's house is located, for streets and caste settlements are coterminous. The numerous streets and an ever-increasing population contribute to an accentuation of the phenomenon of stranger-neighbor in the bazaar situation among the inhabitants of the town. Again, like many other small towns, this town also has a huge Siva temple located in what used to be the middle of the original town, with the Brahmin streets on the bank of the river, close to the temple. (Over the last 30 years, as in other small towns in Tamilnadu, the Brahmins have left their homes in pursuit of careers in Indian metropolitan cities and abroad. The merchant class has bought their homes and the Brahmin Street is now home for the new entrants to the town.) The other Hindu castes are generally indicated their ranking on the basis of the distance of their settlements from the temple, proximity indicating a higher rank. As I already mentioned, this main bazaar lies on the Swamy Sannadhi, a long straight road extending from the main gopuam (tower) gate of the presiding male deity (Siva) of the temple.

Apart from the description of the choice and use of address and reference terms in the bazaar setting, the description of the choice and use of address and reference terms is also done, in this paper, in what one might call the family setting. The latter description is restricted to the experience of the author as a member of a family of a caste, geographically further away from the temple.

4. Politeness, Deference, and Respect

Human languages have some device or another to express politeness, deference and respect to individuals and institutions. Such expressions may be arrived at through the use of appropriate words and phrases, sometimes specially coined and used for the purpose. These may be achieved also through appropriate inflectional increments to the verb of a sentence, generally accompanied by bodily and facial gestures and expressions. The use of an appropriate pronoun form from among the several under each person (first, second, or third) is another device.

A chief characteristic of many South Asian languages generally gives the outline of the mode for expressing politeness, deference and/or respect to persons addressed and referred to. Gender, number and other devices for politeness, deference are all interwoven into the pronoun system of these languages, into the manner these pronouns are uttered with intonations, and various increments added to verbal roots. (Details are given below.)

The pronoun system provides the speaker with possibilities for choice between pronoun forms. The second person slot of the pronoun system gives a spectrum of politeness strategies. In several of these South Asian languages, including Tamil, there are as many as four forms in the second person slot ranging from the most inferior or the least respectful, or the most intimate, to the most superior or the most respectful. While this is true of written Tamil, the spoken Tamil, in its various manifestations through geo-graphical and social dialects, generally has three forms only. It also exhibits certain dynamics (detailed later in the paper) peculiar to itself. Choice of a particular form is governed by the very many social and contextual factors, by factors of person and social perception.

5. Address and Reference in Family Setting

Within a family setting, a woman is seen playing very many different roles. But the choice and use of address and reference terms to women hinge upon the placement of the women, by the speaker, either on the marital line, actual and potential, or on the non-marital line. The kinship line from which the speaker, his own brothers and sisters have or can have or could have had their spouses is viewed as the marital line. The relatives or potential relatives with whom and /or with whose families exchange of brides and grooms is possible are viewed as belonging to the marital line. (Note that marriage is permissible only within the caste and that marriage takes place generally between members of families already related to one another. Members of the same caste, but not related to one another, are placed on the marital or non-marital line through intermediary families.) Based on this placement, certain behavioral norms for choice and use of address and reference terms are made.

1. Within the family (both nucleus and extended), all members of the marital line, elder to the speaker, such as sisters-in-law, etc., are to be addressed (and referred to) with terms of respect. In the social dialect of Tamil under consideration here, it would mean the choice of a second person plural pronoun as subject of the sentence and the inflection of the finite verb for plural, even when the subject addressed to is in reality a single individual.
2. All women of the not-marital line, younger or elder, are addressed in singular endings. This means the choice and use of second person singular pronoun and the inflection of the finite verb for singular; a phenomenon generally resorted to address the inferiors, intimate persons, and younger persons. This second person singular is used also to show disrespect. In the present context, within the family, however, the use of the second person singular pronoun and the inflection of the verb for singular number to refer and address the younger persons are not viewed as showing any disrespect; the usage is simply unmarked.
3. In the absence of the individual who is an elder, the absentee is referred to in third person neuter singular pronoun and the finite verb is also inflected for third person neuter singular, a process that is generally followed while referring to non-human, both animate and inanimate, objects. When more than one absentee is referred to, third person human plural pronoun is used and correspondingly the verb is also inflected for human plural. Note that for reference in plural, the non-human neuter plural is not chosen, although for the expression of human singular the third person neuter singular is chosen.
4. In the absence of the individual who is younger or inferior in social status, the absentee is referred to either in third person neuter singular pronoun or in third person human singular pronoun with corresponding inflection for singular in the verb. Within this usage, the use of the former, namely, the third person neuter singular, is considered as showing more respect and/or affection than the use of the latter. When more than one absentee is referred to, third person human plural pronoun is used and, correspondingly, the verb is also inflected for plural.
5. An important general feature is that men avoid directly addressing a woman (elder to speaker, adult if younger) of the marital line. Messages are conveyed through intermediaries, through the female siblings of the speaker, mother of the speaker or through females of the non-marital kinship line. To some extent a joking relationship, however, is allowed. Even here, speech through intermediaries is most common. Thus the opportunity for using terms of address is rare. The exception is obviously the husband addressing the wife; here, it could be by name or by both abusive and non-abusive terms of endearments. Even here, direct address in the presence of others is kept to a minimum display of such contacts.
6. A woman's life is expected by the community to be confined to social relations within her family. It is also expected to be confined to the street of the same caste. Note that woman's movements are generally restricted here. Hence the social relations are expected to be confined to relatives or potential relatives living in the street. In the next order, the social relations a woman may have may be extended to the female members of castes or groups living in adjacent streets. With the latter, that is, with the members of other castes living in adjacent streets, individual families or even the whole caste at times may establish a pseudo-blood relationship as if the member of the other castes are part of the family linked by blood relationship, calling one another as akkaa "elder sister" ammaa 'mother', tankacci 'younger sister', maamaa 'maternal uncle' attai 'paternal aunt', etc. This is done since any contact outside the caste is to be brought either on par with the relationship within the caste ground, or other types of relations such as those of economic and social status. Because of this reason, the same norms in the choice and use of address and reference terms listed above are followed in the extended pseudo-blood relationship, taking either a marital or non-marital line, this governs the language behavior in this extended family environment.

6. Address in Public Places

We shall now see what conditions the choice and use of address and reference terms in encounters in public places where persons not known to one another, or known rather slightly to one another (as revealed in expressions such as seen her face, seen her buying vegetables, comes to buy things here, etc.) come to interact. One does not ask for caste and then address the individual appropriately. One just places the addressee in a social and economic scale intuitively, an intuition based on concrete markers imparted through the socialization process.

The choice and use of address and reference terms are triggered by three categories of factors: the language used by the addressee, certain nonlinguistic factors closely associated with and retrieved from the appearance and behavior of the addressee, and the factors impinging on the speakers, such as speaker's intent and mood. It is, indeed, difficult to isolate one category of factors from another and to assert the exclusive influence of one category in the choice and use of these terms.

There is an intimate interplay between all the three. This interplay takes place in different and opposing directions. For instance, while certain marked speech behavior, such as the use of low prestige dialect and/or use of marked speech forms used by the addressee, may require in the speakers the use of second person singular pronoun and corresponding verbal inflection generally used for showing least respect, the factors from the second (non-linguistic perceptual markers) and third (speaker's intent and mood) categories may not warrant such use and hence the speaker may be obliged to employ a term of high respect. In a nutshell, while terms used to address family members, relatives in the extended family and even the members holding pseudo-blood relationship are conditioned less by considerations not manifestly economic, the choice and use of terms of address and reference in the bazaar interaction is manifestly social-psychological and economic, and not exclusively linguistically triggered.

7. Language of the addressee

Under the first category of factors, the language used by the addressee guides the speaker in the choice and use of address and reference terms. There are several other linguistic factors such as the addressee's knowledge of other languages, in particular knowledge of English, as revealed through an interspersing of loan words, phrases, idioms and sentences in the speech of the addressee, which also influence the speaker in his choice of terms. These should, however, be seen subsumed under the educational level of the addressee.

One may make a qualitative distinction between the use of a borrowed word occasionally and the use of phrases from another language. Using a borrowed word in clear pronunciation of the donor language is always highly valued as a mark of education and therefore affects the choice of address form used to a woman. If the borrowed words uttered with the "corrupt" pronunciation as in colloquial Tamil, the words cease to evoke any particular respect on the part of the other individuals in the interaction. Use of a phrase is, however, generally done only by the educated and as such it evokes due recognition of the mark of education of the woman who utters it and consequently a due respect is shown to the woman. The use of English words and phrases in the Tamil used in the bazaar setting is a good example of the effect code-switching may have on social evaluation. It is highly doubtful as to whether use of Hindi words and phrases in place of such processes of interspersing of English words and phrases by Tamil speaking woman would evoke a similar respect.

8. Non-linguistic factors

Under the second category, we identify several non-linguistic factors that are closely associated with and retrieved from the appearance and non-linguistic behavior of the addressee. The choice of an appropriate pronoun, word or phrase and bodily gestures and postures is governed by various factors, which condition and govern the apperception, by the speaker, of the social and economic status of the addressee. Generally on the basis of the first category of factors, namely the speech (dialect) used by the addressee, the women are placed as members of either Brahmin or non-Brahmin castes. (There could be nonlinguistic factors as well for making a distinction between the two groups. We do not go into these here. The distinction between the Brahmin dialect of Tamil and the non-Brahmin dialect of Tamil is markedly clear, whereas the distinction between most of the various social dialects of non-Brahmin castes is not, or at least not distinctly perceived and acted upon, in communicational contexts.)

In the choice and use of address and reference terms for women, of the latter group (those belonging to non-Brahmin castes), the following factors are seen in operation:

Age of the addressee (elder person is addressed with respectful terms, if otherwise not in conflict with other social and economic criteria); the attire of the addressee - cost of saree and texture; color choice of saree (certain colors and shades of colors are associated with the preference exhibited by socially low prestigious groups); design of saree; wearing mode; saree worn with blouse or without blouse (the latter a symbol of belonging to old fashioned generation or a socially low prestigious group), saree worn with a matching blouse or without a matching blouse, whether flowers are worn on the hair or on the taali (wedding) chain, whether fragrant flowers are worn or fragrant leaves are worn, saree worn with front pleats or back pleats, wearing the saree ankle length or a few inches above the ankle, foot wear or no foot wear, wedding chain in gold or cotton thread, bangles or no bangles, if bangles are worn, gold bangles or glass bangles, normal ears or those made long, mouth normal or mouth with betel leaves, ornaments or no ornaments, no tattooing or tattooing (and number of kinds of tattooed images and body parts used for tattooing ), and make up in the face or turmeric washed face, (in all these, the former solicits more respect); complexion of the addressee; the type of hair style; the apperception by the speaker of the nature of the addressee (whether she will quarrel to the end and create a scene, etc.); the apperception by the speaker of the area from which the woman hails (persons from certain localities/streets are known for their violent retort); the gait, the general composure and charm; the amount of grease applied to hair and on the face of the addressee (more grease less respect; no grease (on hair) no respect); the occasion and the time of the day in which the addressee is addressed (such as religious functions, fasts, marriages, business commencing and closing hours, dusk worship, and others which prescribe well behavior including showing respect and using respectful terms to all and sundry); the donor-obligant relationship; the compulsive traits of the addressee (for example, the aggressive personality of the addressee coupled with her recent migrant (relatively a stranger or a new person to the locality) or the minority status of the addressee as revealed through several markers, master-servant, teacher-student, familial and other relationships as revealed through several markers and so on. The list presented here can be further expanded.

9. Speaker's intent and mood

In the third category, we consider factors such as those relating to speaker's intent and psychological mood. Under this category, the following govern the speaker's choice and use of terms of address and reference: the child rearing practices of particular families as regards speech; sex and age of the speaker; the socioeconomic, political and at times the religious belief of the speaker coupled with the belief of the political movements of the time; the aggressive, impulsive and compulsive personality of the speaker; the speaker's caste; the linguistic behavior of the speaker as determined by his dialect; and other factors dependent upon the goal of the address of the speaker. It is difficult to isolate each of these from one another and assume independence for them.

10. Dynamic Processes

The three categories of factors listed above for the bazaar situation are engaged in a number of dynamic processes in conjunction with one another. We list below two such pairs of operations. These two operations are valid in the family setting also.

1

1. 1. Downgrading as a process of elevation.
   2. Elevation as a process of downgrading.

While in the so-called standard spoken Tamil or in written Tamil, the use of plural ending in the finite verb indicates a high state of respect shown, there is a process by which a deliberate use of third person neuter singular pronoun form and its corresponding neuter singular inflection in the finite verb indicates politeness, respect or deference the speaker has for the lady addressee or for the female person referred to. The shopkeeper tends to address and/or refer to the woman in the third person singular neuter as a mark of respect. Note that the addressee is "addressed" in third person. This happens between family members, both males and females, and also in some contexts where "master-servant" relationship is involved.

As opposed to this, there is another behavior in which elevation as a process of downgrading is resorted to. In these contexts, the speaker, by the norm, is expected only to use the second person singular pronoun form to address the addressee or use the third person human singular pronoun form to indicate the person referred to. But, in order to show displeasure and or disrespect, the speaker would use the second person plural ending in the verb to address the addressee, or use the third person human plural pronoun form and the corresponding plural ending in the verb to indicate the person referred to. Note that these processes are common for both males and females.

2

1. 1. Elevation when addressee is present.
   2. Downgrading when addressee is absent.

This pair reveals a "double standard" resorted to very easily especially when the addressee happens to be a woman. Face to face, the individual woman or a group of women is addressed with second person plural pronoun form and with plural ending in the verb, and other deferential gestures, etc., but when the addressee is absent, the reference is made with third person human singular pronoun form with singular ending in verb, generally adopted for showing less respect/showing disrespect.

This process is resorted to not only in referring to women, but also others in a wide variety of contexts involving complex caste and other social relations. We shall not go into the details here. A feature that should be noted, however, is the general tendency to refer to cinema and drama actors and actresses in singular terms. There appears to be some stage in which the male personalities begin to be referred to with third person human plural ending in the verb; but, the female personalities continue to be referred to with third person human singular ending all through. Additional investigation is required here. The position here may be compared somewhat with the findings elsewhere in U.S. that male professors are generally referred to (by students and staff alike) by last name in their absence while females of the same occupational status are referred to by first name.

In addition to the above two pairs of dynamic processes, the family setting reveals several other pairs, exclusive to the family setting (with which the "master-servant" relationship of the bazaar in a shop is also to be included).

3

1. 1. Use of pronoun forms for address and reference as showing disrespect.
   2. Non-use of the same as showing respect.

Use of pronoun forms for address face to face is considered showing disrespect within the family, especially when addressing the members of the marital line. The use of other types of address forms is also generally avoided. When essential, on occasions wherein immediate attention of the addressee is to be drawn by the speaker, and appropriate kinship term is resorted to. Within master-servant relationship, or relationship of that type, the speaker chooses and utters only the caste title of the addressee. The use of the caste title rather than the anaphoric forms of both second and third person pronouns is noticed. Avoidance of reference and address is a general rule.

4

1. 1. Silence when addressed is considered as showing respect.
   2. Response when addressed is considered as showing disrespect.

While 'talking back,' 'retort' and 'rebuttal' are considered markedly showing disrespect and or disobedience, even reply in certain contexts which involve matters on interpersonal relations between members of different sexes, interpersonal relationships between family members and on matters generally expected to be handled by the male spouse, even when demanded by the speaker superior to the addressee, is considered as showing disrespect. While some of the latter contexts may be due to the separation of functions between members of a family, even in areas generally approved as the rightful domain of the addressee, the addressee simply does not reply, as silence is treated as concurrence/agreement and which, when broken through utterances, is treated as disrespect to the speaker.

Perhaps the processes listed here in 4 (i) and (ii) do not have anything much to do with forms of address and reference to women. Yet we present these here as one of he strategies of interaction between individuals, of which the choice and use of address and reference terms is an integral part.

5

1. 1. Direct address, reference and narration as showing disrespect.
   2. Indirect address, reference and narration as showing respect.

This process is closely related to and yet different from those of 3 and 4. This must be seen divorced from matters falling under taboo. Preference for narrating something indirectly, and addressing and referring to persons present and absent indirectly is not dictated by the content of discourse, but is resorted to only as a form of deference. This is generally adopted by women, both younger and elder to the addressee, while speaking to the adult male members of the marital line, already reported.

11. Discussion

We have made observations on the choice and use of terms to address and refer to women. A question arises here as to whether such choice and use of terms to address and refer to women differ in any essential manner from the choice and use of terms to address and refer to men in the family setting and in public places.

le difference between the two; where there is no marked difference between the two, such as those one notices in the last three dynamic processes listed above the conflict is resolved if the master-servant relationship is included under purview in those items. Thus, except for certain items, particularly those found under the section Non-linguistic factors, all the others are applicable to both the genders. These non-linguistic factors are factors of gender-based person and social perception, and could be easily substituted by a set of factors, exclusive to the males, thus, still retaining the balance as it were.

That the general processes are more or less the same, perhaps, indicates that such choice and use must be based on factors other than gender in the family setting and public places. That is, there is generally no difference between the factors involved in the choice of form to address men and women except such details as dress, which have their counter parts in male attire. And yet men are still addressed more respectfully than women are. We seek a basis for such language use in the socio-economic relations and the socio-economic status of the individual women addressed to and referred to as perceived by the speaker, and suggests that men in this setting are placed in a higher socio-economic relation and the socio-economic status than the individual women.

The latter fact is corroborated linguistically in two ways.

1. While the factors listed in earlier sections are applicable to both men and women, the use of low respect showing address and reference terms to men appears to be relatively less frequent and this difference in frequency is due to a more finely graded sifting and controlling mechanism. One notices a greater reluctance on the part of a speaker to use least respectful terms to address and refer to a male adult.
2. Secondly, in a dynamic situation, all the factors we have identified are seen to have combined to produce a sense of uncertainty in the speaker in interactions, in public places, with males who are not known well to the speaker, when it comes to the choice and use of terms of address and reference to women, such an uncertainty is conspicuous by its absence.

As a final note, we might mention that the categorization of linguistic behavior into those within the family setting and those of public places is amply justified on the basis of marked difference in the choice and use of terms of address and reference.

classification - transactional setting and personal interaction setting. In the transactional setting, which involves goals such as purchase of items, participants are seen suspending their individuality and acting mainly by virtue of their status as purchasers. We have, in this paper, looked at the customers in public places from the point of view of a person and social perception on the part of the trader. In a sense, looking at the setting in this manner is complementary to the approach of Gumperz.

The participants in the personal interaction setting, Gumperz reports, act as individuals, rather than for the sake of limited, readily apparent goals, within peer group, family circle, etc. Here also Gumperz views the setting from the actor's angle, not the respondent's (the other participant's) angle in the interaction. As a complementary position, we have, however, looked at the setting from the angle of what guides certain aspects of language use by the actor. As stated earlier, the categorization of the setting into that family and that of public places is validated by corresponding differential linguistic behavior. We conclude, then, that this broad categorization of language behavior into those falling under the family setting and those falling under the setting of public places is a useful classification.

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