A Corpus-based and Corpus-Driven Analysis of T-V-Address Practices in Italian: When Men are Politer than Women
(2019) The Social Dynamic of Pronominal Systems: A Comparative Approach — published
Files
No attached file found for this publication.
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- (en) The aim of this research was to examine the Italian pronouns of address by means of diachronic (1840-2010), diatopic (North vs. South), and diastratic (gender, age, socioeconomic background) corpus-based and corpus-driven analyses. Drawing on both corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, we compiled a two million-word corpus made up of narrative texts from the Italian classic literature, written by both men and women writers. Our outcomes confirm first that the most recurrent pronoun is ‘tu’, whereas ‘Voi’ and ‘Lei’ quantitatively come after. With respect to politeness strategies, the pronoun ‘Voi’ appeared with a higher frequency during the 19th century, whereas ‘Lei’ was more recurrent during both the 20th and the 21th centuries. Secondly, the results of the diatopic study suggest that, unpredictably, both the pronouns ‘tu’ and ‘Lei’ would be idiosyncratic to Southerners and ‘Voi’ to Northerners in our diachronic corpus, whereas both ‘tu’ and ‘Voi’ appear to be typical of individuals from the South and ‘Lei’ from the North in our contemporary corpus, as it is. Results stemming from corpus data statistically confirm some tendencies: the current regional use of ‘Voi’ as the V-form in the South as well as the increase in the usage of ‘tu’. Thirdly, as regards the diastratic analyses, men writers would tend to be more polite than women authors. Besides, women writers who supported the fascist regime tended to make use of the pronoun ‘Voi’ in order to comport with its politics of pronouns. On the contrary, antifascist women had the tendency to use the pronoun ‘Lei’. Of particular interest is the fact that diatopic and diastratic influences did not interfere when writers opted for one pronoun over the other. Contrary to the bulk of research, the outcomes of this research emphasize men’s politeness rather than women’s while adding up crucial data on the temporal evolution of the pronouns.
- Affiliations
Citations
Werner, R., & Maeder, C. (2019). A Corpus-based and Corpus-Driven Analysis of T-V-Address Practices in Italian: When Men are Politer than Women. In Paul Bouissac (ed.), The Social Dynamic of Pronominal Systems: A Comparative Approach. John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1163/26660393-bja10029