Abstract
The Yoruba society, like many patriarchal traditions, tends to espouse male supremacy - an ideology that is reflected, often, in many of the cultural values and beliefs of the people. The use of address terms in Yoruba constitutes an aspect of linguistic practices where there is inequality in the use of language between male and male, female and female as well as between male and female. The study reported in this paper focuses on the use of first names (FN), teknonyms (TKM) and pet names (PN) as address forms by Yoruba-speaking women in the city of Ile-Ife in interaction with their husbands. It describes the pattern of use according to a number of social factors including age, level of educational attainment, region of origin and speech context. The paper demonstrates that while these factors are important determinants of address usage by Yoruba women, gender role-expectation (child-rearing) and the relations of power between Yoruba women and men interact in some crucial way in the women's language behaviour. This is particularly so because of the social changes that have been taking place within the Yoruba culture over the last three decades or so.
Highlights
Sociolinguistic and anthropological studies have demonstrated that linguistic practices often reflect the thoughts, values and attitudes that speakers wish or wish not to express and that a society's beliefs about and towards sex differences can be reflected in the way (s) language is used to speak about men and women
The present study focuses on the usage of first names (FN), teknonyms (TKM) and pet names (PN) as address forms by Yoruba-speaking women in addressing and referring to their husbands
When alone with their husbands, 32% of the total number of the women respondents reported the use of FN when alone with their husband, 8% use FN in the presence of child(ren), 7% use it in the presence of their husbands' parents while 60% reported that they used FN during courtship
Summary
Sociolinguistic and anthropological studies have demonstrated that linguistic practices often reflect the thoughts, values and attitudes that speakers wish or wish not to express and that a society's beliefs about and towards sex differences can be reflected in the way (s) language is used to speak about men and women. It is observed that addressing people by name or by one second person pronoun or the other (where there are two types) tends, very often, to demonstrate the kind of relationship existing between a speaker and his/her listener. Using power pronoun semantics as outlined by Brown and Gilman, Fasold (1990: 4 - 5), notes that these relationships are given, in terms of address usage, as usually of the following characteristics: Linguistik online 21, 4/04. (1) that in which one member of the dyad has power over the other. In this type of relationship, the interactants are not equal in status;. (3) that in which the interactants are power equals but have no solidary relationship (through shared values, for example). Interactants are equal in power but they are intimate
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