The linguistic construction of social space : addressing parents-in-law in Malta

Abstract

Sociolinguistic studies have shown that different levels of social relations amongst linguistic communities are maintained by the successful manipulation of language. Brown and Gilman (1960), Brown and Ford (1961), Ervin- Tripp (1972), Bates and Benigni (1975) and Lambert and Tucker (1976) have discovered that different forms of address are effective tools in manifesting the relationship between speaker and addressee as well as in displaying the speaker's identity within the group. The person who holds power may manifest this by the address forms he uses and those which he receives. His subordinates would probably call him by his Title Last Name or TLN, unless he himself has asked them to call him by his First Name or FN or any other less formal form of address. This dispensation, as Ervin-Tripp (1972) calls it, is a sign of the superior's solidarity with his inferiors. However, such a dispensation might not always be the result of solidarity with inferiors but a means to eliminate social distance between himself and older subordinates. In a nutshell, 'pairs of individuals feel uncomfortable within non-reciprocal naming when the elder is of lower status' (Slobin et al. 1968: 293). In view of the above, Fasold (1990: 1) notes that 'in no area of sociolinguistics is the function of language more clearly highlighted than in address forms'. In this article I shall focus on the use of different forms of address within the Maltese extended family, specifically the address forms used in communicating with parents-in-law. My interest in this area of research extends over a period of five years during which I have informally asked my married students at the University of Malta and students who were about to be married, which address forms they use when speaking with their parents-in-law. The students' responses ranged from the most formal TLN to the lesser formal FN. What was particularly striking about the students' responses was that a number of them admitted that they had to resort to strategies in which they avoided using any form of address to their parents-in-law. 'No naming is an outcome of uncertainty among these options' (Ervin-Tripp 1972: 228). However, is it merely uncertainty as to which of these options one is expected to use which is at the root of this avoidance strategy, or are there other important social factors which should be considered? My informal interviews with my students led me to formulate a number of hypotheses. In this study I shall attempt to delve deeper and to analyze possible factors which affect the use of different forms of address. The study is based on fieldwork undertaken in March 1992. One hundred and twenty subjects were interviewed by means of a questionnaire. This questionnaire was administered to a stratified random sample made up of 60 respondents from Safi and 60 from St Julians. I have adopted Linn's (1983) concept of the manual worker to refer to informants of working-class extraction, while the concept of non-manual workers refers to middle-class informants. In the case of full-time housewife respondents, class was ascribed according to their husband's occupation (Levine and Crockett 1966). [Excerpt]