Address Practices and Social Relationships in European Languages

Abstract

Abstract Address practices – the way people use second‐person pronouns, first names, last names and titles, and other terms to address one another – are fundamental to expressing social relationships. They reflect cultural values and can tell us a great deal about social structures and change. This article gives an overview of recent research on address practices, focusing on three European languages – French, German and Swedish. It follows theoretical developments in the study of address from the 1960s onwards, and examines how address practices have evolved in French, German and Swedish since the socio‐political upheavals of that decade. It is argued that the notions of social distance and common ground are central to an understanding of address choice in these languages.

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