How Mothers and Fathers Address their Sons and Daughters in Russian and Vice Versa: A Quantitative Study

Abstract

This paper discusses terms of address that are used in Russian child-parent communication focusing on the gender of the speakers. The data for the study come from a large-scale online survey completed by 1103 subjects. We identify 10 basic patterns of addressing parents and six basic patterns of addressing children. The results show that females tend to use more suffixed forms when addressing their parents, whereas males are inclined to use harsher-sounding forms of address like batja ‘father (informal)’. When addressing their children, females use suffixed diminutive forms and animal names more frequently than males.