Contextualising address choice

Abstract

As we saw in Chapter 2 there has been a shift within sociolinguistic research from a view of social identity as a series of static categories assigned to an individual, such as age and sex, to a position of an individual's social identity being dynamic and contextually situated. Our German data, for example, demonstrate that speakers preferring du or Sie may have similar biographical and social characteristics, which underscores the need to search beyond static social variables to explain choice of address. In the present chapter we will mirror this shift in the way we approach our data. The chapter opens with a basic comparison of the linguistic resources available in the four languages, in order to highlight salient similarities and differences between them. We then consider the data through the prism of two traditional, static categories – age and status – given that they are fundamental elements used both to categorise others and to situate ourselves in the world, and examine their salience for speakers of each language in turn. Moving beyond these pre-defined categories, we take up the notion of ‘perceived commonalities’ as an explanatory category and highlight how ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ are relevant in showing how address choices are contextually motivated. For the purposes of this chapter we are not differentiating between national varieties of German and Swedish, which is the focus of Chapter 5.