LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 23:9 September 2023
ISSN 1930-2940

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Interpersonal Address at Punjabi Workplaces and Its Sociolinguistic Concerns with a Special Focus on Kinship Terms

Ujjal Jeet, PhD

Abstract

The present study aims to analyse the interpersonal address system at Punjabi workplaces, limited to the urban and organizational setups with a special focus on the use of kinship terms in purely professional contexts. The study is qualitative in nature and is based on the methods of observation and survey questionnaire. The data was collected from a sample of 210 respondents from the tertiary educational institutions of Punjab from the age groups of 19- 39, selected with the help of the Simple Random Sampling method. The study concludes that there is a substantial amount of use of kinship terms at Punjabi workplaces and it does not always encode solidarity, rather kinship terms are also used to express either the lower status of the addressee or to overcome the ambiguity about the professional hierarchy of the addressee. The study was significantly delayed by Covid-19 pandemic, particularly at the data collection stages.

Keywords: Interpersonal address; Vocatives; Terms-of-address; Kinship Terms; Sociolinguistics; Punjabi Workplaces; Language and power

1. Introduction

A term-of-address can be defined as that word or phrase which is used for addressing someone in writing or speech. Names, titles, honorifics, diminutive forms, terms of endearment, pejoratives and pronouns qualify as the terms-of-address. Biber (1999) shows that vocatives can take many forms: endearments (honey), kinship terms (Daddy), familiarisers (dude), first name familiarised (Johnny), first name full form (John), title and surname (Mr. Smith), honorific (Sir), nickname (Speedy), and even elaborated nominal structures such as: “those of you who want to bring your pets along”. Additionally, impersonal vocatives may occur in utterances such as “Someone get that phone, will you!”. Choice of vocative forms, therefore, provides an index of (projected or assumed) relationship between the speaker and the addressee (Biber, 1999; McCarthy and O’Keeffe, 2003). Further, it must also be noted that the terms-of-address are different from the terms-of-reference.

While the terms-of-address are nominal items used to talk to somebody the terms-of-reference are nominals used to talk about someone. Thus, the terms-of-reference are integrated in the syntax of the proposition while the terms-of-address are not part of the syntactical structure of the sentence and serve the discourse function of the language. For this purpose, they are located either in the initial or the terminal position of the clause and are considered as vocative adjuncts. Also, there is a special type of term-of-reference which is known as ‘Topic’ and which is not integrated in the syntax of the clause (Dickey, 1997). For example,

• Mother, you are right. (Term-of-address)
• Mother is right (Term-of-reference)
• Mother, she is always right. (Topic)

Further, this linguistic exchange of communicative and social roles and relationships is executed through multiple ways, but the terms-of-address form the first and foremost site for such exchange.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Ujjal Jeet, PhD
Assistant Professor
Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar
ujjal.eng@gndu.ac.in
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1897-2142
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