Perceptions of national and regional standards of addressing in Germany and Austria

Abstract

This article investigates the use of German forms of address in different national and regional varieties of German, as perceived by speakers of those varieties. For particular domains such as the workplace, informants report significant regional and national differences in use not only of pronominal address but also of nominal address and linguistic structures linked to addressing such as greetings. The data also confirm differences in information about and sensitivity for different national varieties between speakers of the dominant and of non-dominant varieties characteristic for asymmetrical pluricentricity.

(When) Can I say Du to You? The metapragmatics of forms of address on German-Speaking Twitter

“…Despite the plural V-form (Sie) being the default address form between adults who do not know each other, the boundaries between the use of the T-form (Du) and the V-form (Sie) are constantly evolving, in particular regarding regional and age-specific uses (Kretzenbacher 2011a). Communities in which the use of the T-form is widely accepted (Duz-Gemeinschaften) encompass sports clubs, political parties, in particular the communist and socialist ones, smaller religious communities, etc.…”

Meaning in a changing paradigm: the semantics of you and the pragmatics of thou

“…This means that the choice between a T or V pronoun depends at least in part on additional determinants such as region, class, gender, age and genre (e.g. Ervin-Tripp 1972;Braun 1988;Burnley 2003;Walker 2007;Rendle-Short 2009, Kretzenbacher 2011. Some of these determinants may at least some of the time effectively coincide with Brown & Gilman's (1960) power dimension.…”

Address Practice As Social Action: European Perspectives

“…The empirical data collected in the first Melbourne Address Project in the early 2000s documented significant differences between address practices in Germany and in Austria, above all in the workplace domain. While less T address is used in Eastern Germany compared to Western Germany, much more T is present in Austria than in Germany, also combined with higher frequency of title use in Austria (see Kretzenbacher, 2011a). There is very little empirical research on address in Swiss German, although Schüpbach (2015) shows in her overview that the existing evidence points to a tendency of less title use and much lower levels of formality in address in Swiss German compared to German German, particularly in the workplace.…”