Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:14:36.341Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Personal reference in English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Gregory L. Murphy
Gregory L. Murphy
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Personal reference is the use of an expression to pick out a person, as in When did John eat the cookies? or Tell Dr. Elwood that I need to see him. This article explores the social factors involved in how speakers choose a referring expression in a given situation. Five experiments were conducted which presented speakers with scenarios and asked them how they would refer to a particular person in that situation. The results showed that speakers were sensitive to the level of intimacy between the speaker and referent, between the addressee and referent, and between a nonparticipating audience and the referent. To a lesser degree, the relation between the speaker and the addressee also influenced choice of referring expression. The results can be explained by a theory that posits that speakers are attempting to preserve their faces and the faces of their addressees in choosing these terms, and so they avoid references that could be face threatening. This theory can be integrated with current theories of object reference and the choice of address terms. (Reference, address, politeness, personal reference)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 1988 , pp. 317 - 349
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bates, E., & Benigni, L. (1975). Rules of address in Italy: A sociological survey. Language in Society 4:271–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In Goody, E. N. (ed.), Questions and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 56–289.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1958). How shall a thing be called? Psychological Review 65:14–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R., & Ford, M. (1961). Address in American English. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 62:375–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R., & Gilman, A. (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In Sebeok, T. A. (ed.), Sryle in language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 253–76.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. (1977). Inferences in comprehension. In LaBerge, D. & Samuels, S. J. (eds.), Basic processes in reading: Perception and comprehension. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Carlson, T. B. (1982). Hearers and speech acts. Language 58:332–73.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Marshall, C. R. (1981). Definite reference and mutual knowledge. In Joshi, A. K., Webber, B. L., & Sag, I. A. (eds.), Elements of discourse understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10–63.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Murphy, G. L. (1982). Audience design in meaning and reference. In LeNy, J-F. & Kintsch, W. (eds.), Language and comprehension. Amsterdam: North-Holland. 287–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Schunk, D. F. (1982). Polite responses to polite requests. Cognition 8:111–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comrie, B. (1976). Linguistic politeness axes: Speaker-addressee, speaker-referent, speaker-bystander. Pragmatics Microfiche 1:7.Google Scholar
Cruse, D. A. (1977). The pragmatics of lexical specificity. Journal of Linguistics 13:153–64.Google Scholar
Dixon, R. M. W. (1972). The Dyirbal language of North Queensland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, S. (1972). On sociolinguistic rules: Alternation and co-occurrence. In Gumperz, J. J. & Hymes, D. (eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 213–50.Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, S. (1969). Sociolinguistics. In Berkowitz, L. (ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, vol. 4. New York: Academic. 91–165.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. A. (1959). Diglossia. Word 15:325–340. Reprinted in P. P. Giglioli (ed.), Language and social context. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. 232–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (1975). Belief, attitude, intention and behavior: An introduction to theory and research. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Friedrich, P. (1972). Social context and semantic feature: The Russian pronominal usage. In Gumperz, J. J. & Hymes, D. (eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 270–300.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (1960). The religion of Java. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1967). On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. In Goffman, E., Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Pantheon. 5–45.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. L. (eds.), Syntax and semantics, vol. 3: Speech acts. New York: Academic. 41–58.Google Scholar
Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harder, P., & Kock, C. (1976). The theory of presupposition failure. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.Google Scholar
Hays, W. L. (1973). Statistics for the social sciences. 2nd ed.New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Hill, J. H., & Hill, K. C. (1978). Honorific usage in modern Nahuatl: The expression of social distance and respect in the Nahuatl of the Malinche. Language 54:123–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1982). Mental models of meaning. In Joshi, A. K., Webber, B. L., & Sag, I. A. (eds.), Elements of discourse understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 106–26.Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental models. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jonz, J. G. (1975). Situated address in the United States Marine Corps. Anthropological Linguistics 17:68–77.Google Scholar
Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1978). Inference processes during reading: Reflections from eye fixations. In Senders, J. W., Fisher, D. F., & Monty, R. A. (eds.), Eye movements and the higher psychological functions. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. 157–74.Google Scholar
Kempf, R. (1985). Pronouns and terms of address in Neues Deutschland. Language in Society 14:223–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koentjaraningrat, R. M. (1957). A preliminary description of the Javanese kinship system. New Haven, CT: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, Cultural Report Series.Google Scholar
Kuno, S. (1973). The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lasnik, H. (1976). Remarks on coreference. Linguistic Analysis 2:1–22.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (1979). Pragmatics and social deixis: Reclaiming the notion of conventional implicature. Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 5:206–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, G. L. (1982). Understanding anaphora. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Psychology Department, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Murphy, G. L. (1984). Establishing and accessing referents in discourse. Memory & Cognition 12:489–97.Google Scholar
Murphy, G. L., & Brownell, H. H. (1985). Category differentiation in object recognition: Typicality constraints on the basic category advantage. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 11:70–84.Google ScholarPubMed
Olson, D. R. (1970). Language and thought: Aspects of a cognitive theory of semantics. Psychological Review 77:257–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paulston, C. B. (1976). Pronouns of address in Swedish: Social class semantics and a changing system. Language in Society 5:359–86.Google Scholar
Philipsen, G., & Huspek, M. (1985). A bibliography of sociolinguistic studies of personal address. Anthropological Linguistics 26:94–101.Google Scholar
Reinhart, T. (1983). Coreference and bound anaphora: A restatement of the anaphora questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 6:47–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosch, E., Mervis, C. B., Gray, W. D., Johnson, D. M., & Boyes-Braem, P. (1976). Basic objects in natural categories. Cognitive Psychology 8:382–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schiffer, S. R. (1972). Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1981). Irony and the use-mention distinction. In Cole, P. (ed.), Radical Pragmatics. New York: Academic. 295–318.Google Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Webber, B. L. (1979). A formal approach to discourse anaphora. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Wicker, A. W. (1969). Attitudes vs. actions: The relationship of verbal and overt behavioral responses to attitude objects. Journal of Social Issues 25:41–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwicky, A. M. (1974). Hey, whatsyourname! Proceedings from the tenth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. 787–801.Google Scholar