The pragmatics of kin address: A sociolinguistic universal and its semantic affordances

Abstract

This paper focuses on an understudied sociolinguistic variable – the use of proper names as opposed to kin terms in address. We present findings from a survey of 80 speech communities that reveals a striking regularity in the way these two noun‐phrase types are used. Where kin terms alternate with names in address, kin terms are always used for senior kin and names for junior kin. The strong cross‐cultural uniformity of this alternation is not easily accounted for by reference to culture‐specific language ideologies, but neither is it explained by proposed universals of politeness. We argue that the referential and semantic properties of kin terms and names motivate culturally grounded, but convergent, conceptualizations of kin terms as honorific and names as anti‐honorific. Our study suggests that the relationship between linguistic forms and sociolinguistic functions may be language‐‘internally’ constrained in such a manner as to be subject to substantive comparative investigation.