A.Professor or Doctor.B.Father or Sister.C.Mr. Chairman……
TEXT E
The Game of the Name
Here comes John Smith walking toward me. Even though be is but a passing
acquaintance, the American greeting ritual demands that I utter a few words to
reassure him of my good will. But what form of address should I use John
Smith Dr. Smith A decision such as this is usually made
unconsciously.
As native speakers in tile American speech
community, we have grown up learning the rules of address at the same time that
we were acquiring the grammatical vales of American - English. At first thought,
it might seem a trivial pursuit to examine the ways in which we address one
another. But forms of address reveal many assumptions we make about memebers of
our speech community.
Our initial decision about the appropriate
address form is based on relative ages. If the person being ad- dressed is a
child, then almost all the rules that we have unconsciously assimilated can
safely’be ignored, and we use the simple formula First Name. The child, in turn,
addresses an adult by using the formula The plus Last Name.
But
defining a" child" is not always easy. 1 address my son’s roommate at college by
FN, even though he is an adult under the law. I, too, have the relative age of a
child to a 75 - year - old acquaintance who calls me Pete. Let us assume that
John Smith is not a child who can be addressed by FN but is either my
contemporary or my elder. The next important determiner for the form of address
will then be the speech situation.
If the situation is a formal
one, then I must disregard all other rules and use social Identity plus Last
Name. John Smith will always be addressed as Dr. Smith (or sometimes simply as
Doctor, with Last Name understood) in the medical setting of office or hospital.
(I am allowed to call him if my status is at least as high as his or if we are
friends outside of our social roles, but the rest of my utterance must remain
respectful. )
We arc also obliged to address certain other
people by their social identity in formal situation: public officials
(Congressman: Your Honor) , educators ( Professor or Doctor) ,leaders of
meetings ( Mr. Chairman ) , Roman Catholic priests (Father Daily) and nuns
(Sister Anna), and so forth. By the way, note the sexist distinction in the
formulas for priests and nuns. The formula for a priest is Father plus Last
Name, but for a nun it is Sister plus Religious Name (usually an FN).
Most conversations, however, arc not carried on in formal speech
situations, and so the basic decision is when to use FN to TLN. A social
acquaintance or newly hired colleague of approximately the same age and rank is
usually introduced on an FN basis. "Pete, I’d like you to meet Harvy. "Now a
problem arises if both age and rank of cone of the parties are higher: "Pete,
I’d like you to meet Attorney Brown."
Attorney Brown may, of
course, at any time signal me that he is willing to suspend the rules of address
and allow an FN basis. Such a suspension is his privilege to bestow, and it is
usually handled humorously, with a remark like, "I answer quicker to
Bruce."
Complications arise when relative age and relative rank
are not both the same. A young doctor who joins a hospital finds it difficult to
address a much older doctor. They are equal in rank (and therefore FN should be
used) but the great disparity in ages calls for TLN. In such eases, the young
doctor can use the No - Name (NN) formula, phrasing his utterances adroitly to
avoid using any term of address at all.
English is quite
exceptional among the world’s languages in this respect. Most European languages
oblige the speaker to choose between the familiar and formal second person
singular ( as in the French tu and vous) ,as English once did when " thou" was
in use.
This is the basic American system, but the rules vary
according to speech situations, subtle friendship or kin relationships between
the speakers, regions of the country, and so forth.
Southern
speech, for example, adds the formula Title plus First Name (Mr. Charlic) to
indicate familiar respect. Southerners are also likely to specify kin terms (as
in Cousin Jane) whereas in most of the United States FN is used for
cousins.
Address to strangers also alters some of the rules. A
speaker usually addresses a stranger whose attire and behavior indicate higher
status by saying sir. But sometimes speakers with low status address those with
obviously higher status by spurning this rule and instead using Mac or buddy--as
when a construction worker asks a passing executive, socially identified by his
atlacie’case, "You got a match, buddy"
How do people address a public official correctly
A.Professor or Doctor.
B.Father or Sister.
C.Mr. Chairman.
D.His Honor or Congressman.