Terms of address are typically used by interlocutors in spoken and written discourse. These terms serve a variety of functions across languages and cultures, reflecting social hierarchies, politeness, familiarity, and interpersonal relations. Despite the prominence of terms of address in Xitsonga, they have received limited scholarly attention in literary texts. This study examines the use of terms of address in Xitsonga literature from a sociolinguistic perspective, employing a descriptive qualitative approach. Data were drawn from three Xitsonga literary works: Ndlandlalati ya Malenga, Byi le Tintihweni, and Xivoni xa Vutomi and were subjected to content analysis. The study is underpinned by politeness theory, which provides a framework for understanding how terms of address function in negotiating social relationships and regulating interpersonal dynamics. The findings indicate a diverse array of terms of address, encompassing kinship terms, personal names, hypocoristic names, nicknames, personal titles, pronouns, teknonyms, and terms of endearment. Their usage varies according to social relationships, degrees of formality, and specific contextual factors within the literary texts. These results provide insight into the functional role of terms of address in Xitsonga written discourse, highlighting how they reflect and negotiate broader sociolinguistic dynamics and socio-cultural norms. Contribution: This study provides insight into the pragmatic uses of address forms in Xitsonga literature. It reveals that these forms are used to fulfil socio-cultural functions and maintain social relations in the written discourse. The study also highlights that Xitsonga address forms are shaped by the social environment in which they are employed.

This article examines the issue of Arabic roots and stems in Old Uzbek from a comparative-historical and etymological perspective. The study focuses on the specific features of the Arabic triliteral root system, its historical development, and its connection with older biliteral Proto-Semitic roots. Based on the theoretical frameworks proposed by B. M. Grande and A. Jeffery, the article analyzes root homonymy, semantic expansion, and the differentiation of meanings in Arabic loanwords adopted into Old Uzbek. It is argued that Arabic borrowings entered Old Uzbek not at the level of abstract roots, but through historically formed and semantically stabilized nominal and verbal stems. Using examples such as kinship terms, as well as lexemes like sultan, salita, and madaniyat, the research reveals the multilayered etymological nature of Arabic loanwords. The findings demonstrate that Arabic exerted not only lexical but also profound historical and morphological influence on the formation of the Old Uzbek lexicon. Keywords: Old Uzbek Language, Arabic Borrowings, Root and Stem, Root Homonymy, Semantic Expansion, Etymology, Comparative-Historical Linguistics, Semitic Languages

This paper explores the challenges of translating Oshiwambo kinship terms into English, emphasizing their importance in intercultural communication and family relationships. Kinship terms in Oshiwambo convey cultural significance and are central to social interactions, but differences in their semantics from English create difficulties for translators, often resulting in communication gaps. To address these issues, the study utilises interviews with Oshiwambo students at the University of Namibia and is based on Vermeer’s Skopos Theory, which emphasises considering the translation’s purpose. Nida’s dynamic equivalence complements this approach, advocating for translations that convey the same meaning and effect as the original. The findings show that traditionally, Aawambo rely on formal equivalence in translation. The paper recommends adopting Nida’s dynamic equivalence aligned with Skopos Theory to produce more accurate and culturally appropriate translations of Oshiwambo kinship terms.

We developed a new paper-and-pencil method, the gender-FUMIE (gFUMIE) test, for assessing gender stereotypes in children by adapting the FUMIE test (Mori, Uchida, & Imada, 2008). The test comprises a series of gender-classification tasks using kinship terms, such as “mother” and “father,” with a target concept randomly interspersed among them. By measuring differences in how quickly the target is classified as male or female, gender stereotypes can be assessed efficiently. Before applying the test to children, a preliminary validation was conducted with 70 undergraduate students (41 males and 29 females) using two typical gender-stereotyped occupations: “doctor = male” and “florist = female.” The results revealed a distinct feminine stereotype for “florist,” whereas no clear gender stereotype was observed for “doctor.” Although further verification using other occupations is necessary, the findings suggest that the assessment principle of the gFUMIE test is effective for detecting gender stereotypes using a child-friendly procedure. We expect that a children’s version of the gFUMIE test will serve as a new method for studying the development of gender stereotypes.

Despite the plethora of empirical studies on students’ translation errors, no systematic reviews (SRs) or meta analyses (MAs) have been conducted in this area. Existing reviews are largely narrative or theoretical, leaving a clear gap in synthesizing evidence on English–Arabic and Arabic–English translation errors produced by student translators. This study addresses this gap by conducting a self systematic review of the author’s empirical research published between 2000 and 2025. It aims to identify translation error types, strategies, and causes, and to map the linguistic and cognitive factors that shape students’ translation performance. A corpus of 19 studies was compiled and organized into five thematic clusters: (i) nonliteral and culturally bound expressions, (ii) scientific and technical terminology, (iii) lexical and collocational errors, (iv) grammatical and syntactic errors, and (v) human vs. AI comparative translation studies. Across these clusters, the review reveals consistent patterns in students’ translation behavior. Recurring error types include literal translation, avoidance, partial translation, transliteration, substitution by synonyms, and paraphrase. The most difficult structures for students were opaque metaphors, culture specific idioms, ibn/bint expressions, polysemes, chemical common names, complex SVO/VSO patterns, and grammatical agreement. Moderately difficult items included binomials, numeral based expressions, om/abu expressions, neologisms, and collocations, while transparent metaphors, simple kinship terms, basic plurals, and straightforward SVO/VSO sentences were comparatively easier. Error sources include limited L1 and L2 lexical knowledge, insufficient exposure to domain specific terminology, restricted cultural knowledge, inadequate collocational competence, and weak morphosyntactic competence in Arabic. Additional causes involve structural interference from English, limited ability to analyze complex source structures, and insufficient awareness of fixed expressions as holistic semantic units. Collectively, the studies highlight the need for explicit instruction in metaphorical mapping, collocational behavior, semantic disambiguation, domain specific vocabulary, scientific nomenclature, and cultural understanding. They also underscore the importance of contrastive analysis of English–Arabic structures and training in discourse level translation strategies that move beyond literal meaning. This review provides the first structured map of translation error patterns in this language pair, filling a critical gap in SR and MA research and supporting the development of more effective, data driven translator training programs in Saudi Arabia.

Social deixis is a key part of pragmatics that shows how language expresses respect, authority, and social ties in different cultures. Although deixis has been studied a lot, there is still not much research on how social deixis can show both authority and emotional bonds in stories with strong cultural and family themes, such as the animated film Coco. This study examines how social deixis is used in Coco (2017), focusing on how it reflects respect, authority, and emotional closeness between characters in Mexican culture. Using a qualitative descriptive method, the study reviews and analyzes all film dialogues with social deixis, sorting them into relational and absolute types based on Levinson’s theory. The findings show that relational social deixis, especially kinship terms and informal address, is most common, highlighting the importance of family ties and solidarity. Absolute deixis, though less common, points to respect and power differences. The study concludes that social deixis in Coco helps build cultural identity and share moral values, showing how film language connects cultural and emotional understanding. Future research could compare how social deixis appears in different cultures and media to deepen our understanding of language, culture, and communication.

ABSTRACT This article offers a semiotic analysis of the Chinese hip-hop song Sis by Young Shar, examining how language, imagery, and narrative reflect and reshape grassroots social relations in lower-tier Chinese towns. Using a four-part analytical framework – Form, Feature, Function, and Footing – the study explores how the song constructs meaning through its commercial form, linguistic choices, symbolic messages, and shifting speaker positions. Recognized for its popularity and industry recognition, Sis received two major Netease Cloud Music hip-hop awards in 2023. It is selected for analysis not only due to this visibility, but also for its unusually direct portrayal of sex work, male bonding, and class-based emotional experience, topics that are rarely addressed so explicitly in Chinese popular music. The lyrics reveal complex dynamics of gender, power, and morality, particularly within informal social networks. By analyzing elements such as code-switching, kinship terms, and metaphorical imagery, the paper highlights how relationships of care, control, and survival operate in marginalized communities. The analysis also considers how the song navigates tensions between artistic expression and censorship. Ultimately, Sis is interpreted as a form of vernacular storytelling that captures the contradictions and emotional resilience of those living on the margins of contemporary Chinese society.

This study explores the use of terms of address by local speakers in Sudaji Village, Buleleng Regency. The research was motivated by a unique linguistic phenomenon in which Sudaji residents employ distinct address forms that differ from commonly used Balinese expressions. The study employed a descriptive qualitative design. Data were collected through observation, interviews, and audio recordings involving community members who fulfilled predetermined sociolinguistic criteria. All Balinese and Indonesian data were transcribed into English and analyzed using the Huberman qualitative model, including data collection, reduction, display, and conclusion drawing. The findings revealed five main categories of address terms: personal pronouns, kinship terms, first names, power and hierarchy-based terms, and mockery terms. Each category performs specific pragmatic functions such as signaling politeness, maintaining social hierarchies, constructing identity, indicating familiarity, or expressing intimacy. The analysis also showed that the selection of address terms is influenced by social variables including age, kinship, caste, familiarity, and situational context. The study concludes that Sudaji terms of address constitute an important cultural-linguistic resource that reflects local values and social structures, yet remain vulnerable to language shift as Indonesian becomes dominant in daily communication. Preserving these linguistic forms is therefore essential for maintaining local identity and enriching sociolinguistic studies in Bali.

The article is dedicated to research into the category of foreignness: the peculiarities of its representation in non-closely related languages within the framework of linguistic, cultural, and xenological research. The concept of xenosphere is introduced, its structure consisting of five subspheres: aposessivity, territoriality, acognativity, ignotiveness, prodigality is described. These subspheres form the specific perception of the “foreign” and are expressed in the language through deictic means. The purpose of the study is to describe linguistic models and deictic means of expressing foreignness in the Russian, German, and English languages using the search parameters чужой/fremd/alien. The empirical basis of the study consists of contexts obtained by continuous sampling method from the National Corpus of the Russian Language, the German corpus DWDS-Korpora, and the British National Corpus. A wide range of deictic units has been identified to express foreignness: possessive, demonstrative, and indefinite pronouns, temporal and spatial adverbs, prepositions and postpositions, articles, kinship terms, emotional epithets, and others. The linguistic models for expressing aposessivity, territoriality, and acognativity include a verb, a descriptive attribute, and a noun, with the exception of the two-term model used to express subject territory. The deixis of ignotiveness is expressed through verbs of action and indefinite pronouns combined with a descriptor, the language means of theme and rheme expression in a sentence. The deixis of ignotiveness is conveyed by means of constructions that indicate the subject of perceiving foreignness and verbs of mental activity combined with descriptors. Differences in the objectification of the alien in the considered linguistic cultures were established.

Kinship terms are the markup language of social kinship status, and for the internal society of an ethnic group, the structure of kinship terms corresponds to the internal social organizational culture. The kinship language of the hmongb lens branch of the Miao ethnic group in the western dialect reflects the relational framework of its internal social structure, forming a hierarchical kinship social rule of "center - outer circle - edge" through the use of kinship language that includes five generations of names vertically and three branches of blood relatives, collateral relatives, and in-laws horizontally.

Social media advertising constructs complex communicative relationships between brands and consumers through strategic deployment of person reference forms. This study examines how German and Chinese cosmetics advertisements employ personal pronouns and person designations to create intimacy, build solidarity, and construct gendered identities. Drawing on 602 advertisements from Facebook and Weibo, the analysis compares Nivea and Nivea Men campaigns across both languages. Results reveal striking cross-linguistic differences: German advertising relies heavily on pronominal reference, creating dialogic relationships through combinations of first-person plural wir (“we”) and second-person plural familiar ihr (“you”). Chinese advertising deploys more person designations, with extensive use of gendered nominal forms for identity construction. German achieves gender targeting primarily through contextual disambiguation and generic masculines, while Chinese employs elaborate person designation vocabulary including kinship terms, diminutives, and internet slang neologisms. These patterns reflect language-specific pragmatic resources and cultural communication norms: German dialogic bilaterality versus Chinese social categorization emphasis. The findings demonstrate that reference form selection constitutes strategic relationship technology reflecting and reproducing cultural values and gendered identities within commercial discourse.

This study investigates the metaphorical mappings of parental kinship categories: father, mother, and grandparents in the Hausa language, using the Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) as framework. The study collected data from 200 Hausa Native Speakers using Semantic Elicitation Task from naturally-occuring situations. The research reveals that these kinship terms extend far beyond their literal family references. The ‘father’ Uba is metaphorically conceptualized as a ‘shelter’, ‘wall’, and ‘pillar’, showing roles of strength, protection, and stability. The ‘mother’ Uwa is framed as ‘shade’, ‘coolness’, and ‘emotional centrality’, embodying care, nurturance, and moral significance. ‘Grandparents’ Kakafor both male and female are depicted as ‘friends’, ‘indulgent figures’, and ‘repositories of history’, signifying their roles in intergenerational bonding and cultural continuity. These metaphorical mappingsshow the cognitive and cultural dimensions of Hausa kinship expressions which illustrate how language encodes complex social values, emotional relationships, and communal identities. The study affirms that Hausa kinship metaphors are not arbitrary but culturally grounded cognitive tools that shape social interaction and cultural worldview. It contributes to African linguistics and cognitive semantics by offering deeper insights into the interplay between metaphor, language, and culture in an indigenous African context.

This article examines the lexical and semantic features of aphorisms formed on the basis of kinship-related vocabulary in the English language. Kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister, child, son, daughter, and family play a significant role in shaping aphoristic expressions that convey universal human values, moral judgments, and philosophical reflections. The study focuses on the semantic structure of aphorisms, the figurative and metaphorical extension of kinship terms, their connotative meanings, and pragmatic functions. Using a lexical-semantic and contextual analysis, the article demonstrates that kinship-based aphorisms in English reflect both biological and social relationships, serving as a powerful means of generalization and evaluation. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of aphorisms as a culturally loaded and semantically dense linguistic phenomenon.

Introduction: Languages differ significantly in their encoding of kinship lexicon (Khalilia, Bella, Freihat, Darma & Giunchiglia, 2023). Languages that come into contact with others using different encoding systems are of particular interest to linguistics (Honkola & Jordan, 2023). A relevant example is Stivoroto, an Italian dialect spoken in the village of Stivor near Prnjavor. An important research question concerns how Stivorians lexicalize kinship, specifically which domains have changed compared to the original system, considering that this community has resided in Prnjavor for nearly 150 years, during which it has interacted intensively with the local population. Aim: The primary aim of this study is to describe the semantic field of kinship in Stivoroto through the lens of Serbian language contact. The secondary aim is to collect lexicon from this domain, contributing to the documentation and preservation of the Stivor dialect, which is now nearly extinct . Materials and Methods: Kinship lexemes were collected from oral narratives of native speakers as part of the Stivorling project (Montibeler, Runić & Falaleev, 2025). Specifically designed interviews were also conducted to elicit kinship vocabulary. These terms were analyzed through comparison with equivalents in Italian, Serbian, and the original Trentino-Venetian dialect, focusing on meaning, usage, and variation. Results: The study of kinship in the Stivor dialect showed that most original forms have been preserved, reflecting strong ties to Italian roots and traditional family conceptions. Serbian influence is primarily evident in possessive and affinal kinship terms, and in expressions of playful or emotive relations, particularly where certain kinship roles were rare or culturally unexposed, leaving the community without stable terminology. Conclusion: This study represents an important step toward understanding Italian–Serbian lexical contact and contributes to preserving the Stivor linguistic heritage, for which written documentation is nearly nonexistent.

This article shows how kinship terms are used to identify oneself and address others in Pakistani English, focusing on how the words can be used by speakers to negotiate social relationships, express cultural values and provide the indication of identity. In a sociolinguistics, study of conversation data and interviews shows that the terms of kinship such as brother, sister, chachu, bhabi and some others are employed to establish solidarity, to show respect and values and to indicate in-group membership. This qualitative study, applying the thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021), discusses the difficulties of language, culture and identity in Pakistani English and notes how these kinship terms are a significant resource to create and negotiate individual and social identity.

This study presents a comprehensive morphological and socio-historical analysis of the Korean second-person pronoun Jane (), tracing its evolution from a medieval reflexive form to a highly specialized kinship term and, further, to a potent cultural symbol. Through an integrated approach combining historical linguistics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology, the paper argues that Jane () has undergone a process of cultural-semantic metamorphosis. Rather than fading into obsolescence, it narrowed functionally to occupy a precise relational niche—primarily as an address from parents-in-law (cheobumo, 모) to son-in-law (sawi, )—while simultaneously accumulating dense indexical meanings. As its everyday use contracted, Jane () became a marked symbol of traditional authority and hierarchical integration, enabling its regeneration across pedagogical, media, literary, and public discourse fields. The paper thus challenges conventional measures of linguistic vitality, proposing instead that a form's persistence may be sustained through distributed symbolic utility rather than frequency of colloquial use. By modeling Jane )'s adaptive trajectory, this study offers broader insights into the mechanisms through which language retains historical social structures and negotiates cultural continuity amid modernization.

Languages vary in how they order their kin terms. Kin terms and systems in Uralic languages have changed considerably over time, which has caused challenges for the reconstruction of Proto-Uralic kin terms. There are terms that cannot be reconstructed altogether, terms that can be fairly reliably reconstructed both phonologically and semantically, and terms that, while being easily reconstructed phonologically, exhibit semantic variation that is difficult to interpret. In this paper, we focus on the last-mentioned group and aim to reconstruct the most accurate meanings of certain selected Proto-Uralic kin terms. In our view contact has been the most significant factor driving change – especially structural change – in Uralic kinship terminology. In this paper, we consider both the present and historical contact situations of different Uralic branches and peel away the secondary contact-induced changes in their kinship patterns before attempting to reconstruct the meaning of the terms in Proto-Uralic. Alongside this we have also carried out an etymological examination of the terms. We call our method the areal-etymological approach to semantic reconstruction. With our approach we found that the most parsimonious semantic reconstructions for PU *čečä, *ekä, and *koska are ‘parent’s younger brother’, ‘parent’s elder brother’, and ‘parent’s elder sister’, respectively. A thorough examination of the reconstructed Proto-Uralic kin terms as a whole also revealed that relative age distinction was a salient general feature already in Proto-Uralic kinship terminology. Our study showcases how by delving into an old question with a fresh approach, one can shed light on the distant past of the Uralic languages.

It is well known that Finnic obtained a large number of loanwords from both Germanic and Baltic, and inferences about the nature of these contacts and the lives of the people speaking these languages have been made based on the existing loanword material. In this paper we go deeper into the topic via a novel combination of three aspects. First, we divided Finnic into the stages Early, Middle, and Late Proto-Finnic and focused specifically on Germanic and Baltic loanwords in Early and Middle Proto-Finnic as those were most likely the languages spoken in the Baltic region during the first millennium BC. Second, by focusing on this early loanword material we combined linguistic and archaeological evidence around three themes: 1) agriculture, 2) bronzeworking and its implications, and 3) family life. We found a surprisingly coherent group of Germanic loanwords related to bronze casting, and we propose that the speakers of both Germanic and Finnic were living in fortified settlements and participated in the bronze-casting business. The connections between Finnic and Baltic were more familial as indicated by the borrowing of several kinship terms. Third, we considered the language-contact situation in the Baltics as a whole, i.e. we also discussed what we know or might be able to know about loanwords from Finnic into Baltic and Germanic and between Germanic and Baltic. All in all, through a multidisciplinary approach we were able to gain new insights into the well-studied topic of the Finnic past, showing that more of this kind of research is needed in the future.

This study investigates the pragmatic functions of kinship address terms and associated politeness strategies in bilingual Uzbek-English movie dialogues. Using a qualitative comparative approach, the research examines how kinship terms such as "aka," "opa" in Uzbek and "brother," "sister," or "elder" in English function as markers of politeness, hierarchy, and social relations. Drawing on speech act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1975), politeness frameworks (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Leech, 2014), and media discourse analysis (Bednarek, 2018; Culpeper, 2021), this paper identifies patterns of indirectness, deference, and egalitarianism. Findings reveal that Uzbek dialogues employ kinship terms extensively as face-saving strategies, whereas English dialogues rely on modal politeness and hedging. The study contributes to intercultural pragmatics and offers insights into subtitling, translation, and cross-cultural communication education.

Aims and objectives: This study investigated how Chinese learners of English represent spatial metaphorical concepts when processing Chinese and English kin terms that differ in lexicalization, and whether English learning influences the conceptualization of Chinese kin terms. Methodology: Using a semantic judgment task and eye-tracking technology, the study investigated 70 Chinese high/low-level English learners’ spatial metaphorical cognitive pattern of “elder-up junior-down” and “patrilineal-inside maternal-outside” in Chinese and English contexts, and compared the Chinese spatial metaphorical cognitive pattern between high and low-level English learners. Data and analysis: Participants’ reaction time and eye movement data were analyzed using mixed-effects repeated-measures analysis of variance. Findings: Significant three-way interactions were found among seniority, position, and language in the up–down spatial metaphor experiment, as well as among kinship relation, position, and language in the inside–outside spatial metaphor experiment. The spatial metaphorical effects were observed only during the processing of Chinese kin terms, but not English kin terms. This suggests that cross-linguistic differences between Chinese and English kinship systems give rise to divergent cognitive patterns, which are flexible and sensitive to language context. In addition, a significant four-way interaction among seniority, position, language, and English proficiency was identified. Specifically, high-level English learners exhibited a weaker “junior-down” spatial metaphorical effect in Chinese kin term processing compared with low-level learners, indicating that L2 experience may influence L1 conceptualization in specific domains. Originality: Few studies have explored how second language learners represent concepts that are encoded differently across languages, or whether advanced learners retain native-like conceptual patterns after attaining high L2 proficiency. Significance: These findings contribute to the linguistic relativity hypothesis by revealing how language influences cognition through bilinguals’ metaphorical representations of kinship. The study offers valuable insights into bilingual conceptual organization.