English Addressing Forms

ENGLISH ADDRESSING FORMS Addressing forms is an interesting phenomenon in the study on cross- cultural communication. There exist numerous addressing systems in different cultures and languages. Like many other Eastern languages, Vietnamese language has a so complicated one that makes foreigners get confused when using Vietnamese addressing forms. Many foreigners say that accessing to Vietnamese addressing forms is not much different from entering to a maze. It is partly true and understandable because Vietnamese addressing system is one of the most complicated features in Vietnamese language that even its people find it difficult to use or explain it let alone foreigners who have little knowledge of the culture of Vietnam. Therefore, this essay will aim at discovering basic characteristics of the addressing system in Vietnamese language. This essay will focus on three main parts: the Vietnamese addressing terms, kinds of addressing relationship and culture shocks that people often meet when using addressing system. Firstly, the essay will start off with the Vietnamese addressing terms. Addressing terms are words used to addressee or call the hearer or speaker in the communication. It is quite impossible to list in this essay all addressing terms used in Vietnamese languages. However basically, Vietnamese addressing terms can be categorized into ten main types. Firstly, like many other languages, Vietnamese people use basic personal pronouns such as “tao”, “chúng tôi”, “mày”, “các bạn” ,etc, to addressee each other. This kind of addressing term are the most commonly used in Vietnamese communication The next commonly used terms are kinship ones such as “ông”, “chú”, “cháu”, “con”, etc. Kinship terms are the ones that people firstly used to call members of ascending generations and then they are extended to call other members that have no relative relationship in the society as well. In addition, Vietnamese addressing system also have addressing terms which are proper name “Lan”, “Mai”,etc; title words such as “giáo sư”, “giám đốc”, etc; occupational words like “thầy”, “bác sĩ”, etc, or both title or occupational words plus proper name such as “giáo sư Mai”, “thầy giáo Hùng”, “trưởng phòng Lan”, etc. More over, Vietnamese people also use normalizing adjectives to call themselves or the hearer. For example, an old people can address himself as “già” or “lão”. Such words are originally adjectives which means “old”, but now are used as personal pronouns. It is the similar thing applied when people address others by their nicknames such as “còi”, “béo”, etc. More interestingly, the next addressing term is a very special one that exist only in Vietnamese addressing form, that is demonstrative terms such as “đây”, “đằng này” . for the speaker and “đấy” “đằng ấy”, “ấy” for the hearer. Originally, such words are not personal pronouns but here they function as personal pronouns effectively. Besides, it is impossible to forget to list here addressing terms that borrowed from other countries especially from China and French. This kind of term contributes dramatically to the diversification of Vietnamese addressing term. They are words borrowed from China such as “huynh”, “đệ”, “tỷ”, “muội”, “trẫm”, etc and from French such as “moa”, “toa”, etc. Finally there are also terms of affection or endearment such as “cưng” “cún con ”, “anh yêu”, etc which are used most commonly when the addresser and addressee have an very, intimate relationship. According to many people both Vietnamese and foreigners, Anglicist addressing system is much simpler than Vietnamese one. It is because of this that in Anglicist system, there exists a neutral dyad “I-You” which is used in communication as “prefabricated units”. “Prefabricated units,” means that these units can be used in any context and with anyone. It can do so because “I” and “you” do not include in themselves any information of age, gender or family relationship, etc. However, unluckily, Vietnamese addressing one has no equivalence with the dyad “I-You” in Anglicist because there are always a number of socio-cultural factors dominating Vietnamese addressing system. The factors that determine languages forms of address terms vary from one culture to another. However, the prominent determining factors in Vietnamese forms may be occupational status, age, family hierarchy and interactional context. The occupational status factor say that people with different social status will be addresses differently depending on the position that they take in the society. For example a teacher can be addressed as “thầy giáo” but when he become a headmaster, he will be called “Thầy hiệu trưởng”, etc. The same thing can be applied to the factor of age. It is deepened on the gap between the speaker and the hearer that a person can decide the appropriate addressing term to call himself and the interlocutor. For example if the speaker is much older than the hearer, he can address the hearer as “ông” or as “bác”, “chú”, “anh” if the hearer is less older. Kinship terms are one of the most widely term used in Vietnamese addressing system and family hierarchy is the dominant factor in choosing the right addressing term. Family hierarchy is the order of the relationship between people who share some family connections. However, it is used to address people that between them there have not any family ties also but if the relationship between the interlocutors is family relationship, the addressing term system will be decided by this factors regardless of another factors such as age or interactional context. Supposing the speaker is much older than the hearer but the hearer is the younger sister of the speaker’s mother, therefore the speaker will have to address himself as “cháu” and call the hearer as “dì”. However this factors will not be apply if kinship terms are used to address people without family ties, in that case there will be other factors will affect the decision-making of the interlocutors. The factor of interactional context also plays a very important role in deciding the addressing term. It means that the decision of choosing addressing term is different in different context of communication. The addressing terms used in trade transactions is different with those used in meeting or at school. For instance, a son at home can address himself as “con” and call his mother as “mẹ” but at school, his mother is his teacher also, he has to change the addressing terms as “em” and call his mother as “cô”. Besides these main factors, there are still a number of important other ones that affect similarly the way people addressee as the mentioned factors. They are such factors as: gender, qualifications, physical strength, occupations, marital status and dwelling area. Among which, the factor of dwelling area is also an important and interesting one that affect the way people address. For example, in the North of Vietnam, people call their parents as “bố” and “mẹ” but in the South, they call them as “ba” and “má” or people living in northern villages call their parents as “thầy” and “u”. The choice to use appropriate addressing term sometime is made easily but sometime very difficulty especially when a number of socio-cultural factors dominate the choice at the same time. In order to understand more about how to addressing people, the next part of this essay will work as a very efficient tool. As mentioned above, there are many kinds of address forms in Vietnamese which are dominated by different socio-cultural factors. One of the most important particular traits of the Vietnamese is that they always appreciate their families, which also affects the usage of address forms in daily life. Therefore the most popular address form in Vietnamese is kinship terms which have been used to address people within the family. In Vietnamese (Northern dialect), there are usually 34 dyads of kinship terms which are equivalent to the dyad I – YOU in American English in terms of 6 generations around “ego” STT Kinship terms as address forms used in family First person Second person 1 Cè ChÝt / Con 2 ChÝt / Con Cè 3 Kþ Chót / Con 4 Chót / Con Kþ 5 Cô Ch¾t / Con 6 Ch¾t / Con Cô 7 ¤ng Ch¸u / Con 8 Ch¸u / Con ¤ng 9 Bµ Ch¸u / Con 10 Ch¸u / Con Bµ 11 B¸c Ch¸u / Con 12 Ch¸u / Con B¸c 13 Bè Con 14 Con Bè 15 MÑ Con 16 Con MÑ 17 Chó Ch¸u / Con 18 Ch¸u / Con Chó 19 C« Ch¸u / Con 20 Ch¸u / Con C« 21 ThÝm Ch¸u / Con 22 Ch¸u / Con ThÝm 23 CËu Ch¸u / Con 24 Ch¸u / Con CËu 25 D× Ch¸u / Con 26 Ch¸u / Con D× 27 Dîng Ch¸u / Con 28 Ch¸u / Con Dîng 29 Dîng Ch¸u / Con 30 Ch¸u / Con Dîng 31 Anh Em 32 Em Anh 33 ChÞ Em 34 Em ChÞ Table 1: Kinship terms as address forms used in family Kinship terms in Vietnamese are more diversified than in English because in Vietnamese kinship terms, there are : • Distinction between status in family hierarchy B¸c Anh ChÞ Chó Em Em • Distinction between paternal and maternal relationship B¸c – Chó C« CËu D× • Distinction between blood and marital relationship B¸c – Chó – CËu C« - D× Dîng ThÝm – Mî Because of the habit of Vietnamese people, kinship terms as address forms are not only limited in family relationship but also used as an effective way to communicate in society. In social communication, the participation of kinship terms as address forms is very active and in fact they overwhelm other relationships. However, not all kinship terms are widely used in social communication. When being used in social relationship, some of them disappear as in Table 2 STT Kinship terms as address forms in social relationship First person Second person 1 Ch¸u/ Con Cô 2 Ch¸u / Con ¤ng 3 Ch¸u / Con Bµ 4 Ch¸u / Con B¸c 5 Ch¸u / Con Chó 6 Ch¸u / Con C« 7 Em Anh 8 Em ChÞ 9 Anh Em 10 ChÞ Em 11 C« Ch¸u / Con 12 Chó Ch¸u / Con 13 B¸c Ch¸u / Con 14 ¤ng Ch¸u / Con 15 Bµ Ch¸u / Con Table 2: Kinship terms as address forms used in social relationship Circular Relationship From kinship terms used as address forms as discussed above, there has a relationship called “Circular relationship” Chart 3: Circular Relationship This relationship is widely used in communication within family as well as in society to show inequality, respect (inferior to superior), intimacy (superior to inferior) and solidarity. To Vietnamese foreign learners, understanding and using the relationship appropriately are quite difficult. However, once making use of it, effective communication is within their reach. Horizontal relationship-Type I Beside the Circular relationships, Vietnamese people also use Horizontal relationships to express their equality in status and ages. There are two types of Horizontal relationships in Vietnamese addressing forms. The Horizontal relationship-Type I is used by interlocutors who are of power equals, particularly by young people, friends and classmates. Vietnamese people use Horizontal relationship-Type I to express informality, equality and friendliness. Followings are 15 common dyads used in Horizontal relationship-Type I: Chart 4: Horizontal Relationship Type I in Vietnamese address forms Like multiple name in English, the use of these dyads is really difficult for Vietnamese foreign learners. These dyads are arranged in a relative way because we do not mention other factors supplemented to the emotional expression such as lexico-modal markers, paralinguistic factors, gestures, eye- contact, facial expressions, proxemics, etc. We would like to take notice on three interchangeable addressing dyads in Vietnamese addressing forms: Ai-Ai Ta/ người ta- Mình Mình- Ta/người ta This is an interesting phenomenon in Vietnamese addressing forms. “Ai” could be the first or the second person in different contexts: Eg: Ai đi để ai thương ai nhớ Ai về cho ai hết sầu mong. Defining “mình” or “ta/ người ta” as the first or the second person depends mostly on the context of speech. Eg: Mình về ta chẳng cho về Ta nắm vạt áo ta đề câu thơ. “Mình” is the second person and “ta” is the first person, but in the sentence: Mình đây ta đấy duyên còn nữa chăng? “Mình” is the first person, and “ta” is the second person. The dyad “mày-tao” is also remarkable phenomenon in Vietnamese addressing forms. It is commonly considered a course dyad to express angry but in fact, it is also used to express informality and friendliness as the dyad “Je –Tu”in French and “Ia-Tu” in Rusian. The next kind of relationship, the Horizontal Relationship type II are also used among those who share the relatively equal social power and age but instead of expressing the solidarity and intimacy like the horizontal relationship type I, the horizontal relationship type II focuses on the inequality, formality, politeness and respect. It is represented in the following chart. Interlocutors I YOU Older but lower status T«i Titles Younger but higher status T«i Kinship terms above “ego” Table 5: Compromise with conflict between age and status in Vietnamese address forms Looking at the chart, it can be seen that in this kind of relationship, there are two cases. Firstly if the speaker has lower status but he is older than the hearer, in this case the speaker can use the dyad “ Tôi-Title” in order to show his respect and politeness to the hearer. For example, when the speaker wants to speak to his director who is much younger than him, he can use the dyad “Tôi -Giám đốc” such as: “Xin giám đốc cho tôi nghỉ phép hai ngày”. Secondly, in the case that the speaker is a director, he wants to talk to his secretary who is older than him, he can use the dyad “Tôi- kinship above ego” in order to show his respect and politeness as well. The kinship above ego are “anh/chị”, “cô/chú”, “bác”, “ông/bà”, “cụ”. Choosing what kind of kinship above ego will depend on the gap between the speaker’s age and the hearer’s. Chart 6: Horizontal Relationship Type II in Vietnamese address forms When using this kind of relationship, there are some notes that you have to pay attention to. The first one is about the dyad “ Tôi-Cô/Chú” and “Tôi- Anh/Chị”. Although in the family hierarchy, the addressing terms “cô/ chú” show the higher status than the terms “Anh/Chị”, it is necessary to remember that in the horizontal relationship type II, the dyad “Tôi-Cô/Chú” is less formal and more solidarity than the dyad “Tôi-Anh/Chị”. In fact, the dyad “T” is often used with people who are younger than the speaker. Using in such way helps the speaker to maintain the formality and express the intimacy as well. For example the sentence “Chú cứ nói thế chứ chú mà làm thì tốt hơn tôi là cái chắc” is much less formal and more intimate than the sentence “Anh cứ nói vậy chứ anh mà làm thì còn tốt hơn tôi ”. [...]... variant can be illustrated in table and chart as follows: TÔI TITLE (YOU) (I) em/ cháu Table 7: Dynamic Relationship Type I in addressing with people with higher status to show intimacy but respect Chart 8: Variant of Dynamic Relationship Type I Today, the change in address forms like that in communication between superior and inferior in Vietnamese society usually happens quite quickly Vietnamese... Tôi Title to straightly use the dyad Cháu/ Em Title to show intimacy and respect in relation This phenomenon is relatively similar with the process of changing from Title Last name to First name in English In the mentioned relationship, the first person changes while the second person may change in correspondence with the first person as in table 7 or remain unchanged as in chart 8 However, there... If she has the same age with his children, he will use chỏu instead of her title, or if she has the same age with his older or younger sister, he will address as ch or em, respectively These kinds of addressing help remain the formality (tụi for the first person) as well as the informality (kinship term for the second person) Eg: Ny, em i, cho tụi 2 nõu nhộ! However, many Vietnamese people would like . ENGLISH ADDRESSING FORMS Addressing forms is an interesting phenomenon in the study on cross- cultural communication. There exist numerous addressing. foreigners get confused when using Vietnamese addressing forms. Many foreigners say that accessing to Vietnamese addressing forms is not much different from entering