Language socialization: The naming of non-kin adults by African children and preadolescents in intercultural encounters

Abstract

Naming (i.e., addressing or referring to) non-kin adults by African children and preadolescents in first-time encounters may, at first sight, seem simple. On close inspection, however, it requires tact because the choice of forms of address is determined by several factors (age, level of solidarity, cultural background). Given that forms of address intertwine with cultural values, African parents spare no effort to transmit appropriate use of forms as an expression of African-ness. Indeed, ways of speaking constitute a behavioral manifestation of a tacit system of cultural rules, or “scripts”. The use of address forms at a given period may provide insights into the evolution of naming norms among Africans over generations. The main linguistic devices found in the data are: teknonymy, fictive use of kinship terms, and accommodation. In addition, upgrading, i.e., a move up the scale of naming due to solidarity, was also attested in the data. The study draws from insights in sociolinguistics and speech act studies, and takes inspiration from the ethnography of speaking and discourse analysis to highlight the interest of looking at forms of address as social indexing, an indicator of the user's cultural ecology.