7.1 Introduction

Address terms are forms used by the speaker to denote the intended hearer of an utterance. They include nominal terms of address (vocatives) and second-person pronouns. Over time we can see the obsolescence and rise of terms of address, semantic changes in the terms of address, and, more importantly, changes in the social distinctions that they make.

In the history of English, there has been a fundamental change in the second-person pronoun system. The pronouns of Old English, þū ‘thou’ and ʒē ‘you’, which distinguished singular and plural addressees, changed in Middle English, most probably under French and Latin influence, to forms that expressed intimacy/closeness or deference/distance, respectively. How this system worked in the ME and EModE periods is a matter of great scholarly debate. The intimate form thou became increasingly infrequent in the seventeenth century, and by about 1700, it had been replaced by you for most users; you no longer carried social meaning but came to be used indistinguishably for singular and plural addressees in all social contexts. Thou was then restricted to use in specialized domains (e.g., certain religious groups, archaizing poetry, biblical discourse [see Chapter 8, §8.5]) and in regional dialects.

Nominal terms of address have not undergone such systematic change, but the individual lexical and semantic changes have been extensive. This chapter begins by illustrating nominal change with the term lady. We then turn to the pronominal system. The use of thou and you can be approached in a number of different ways. We look at the pronominal system in Middle English, when the honorific system of use is arising, and in Early Modern English, when it falls out of use. EModE evidence from trial records and depositions, from personal letters, and from literary records, especially Shakespeare, presents a complex and often contradictory picture that often proves difficult to interpret. We then turn to the nominal system, beginning with an overview of this system in Present-day English. OE and ME studies of vocatives, where they exist, are summarized. In Early Modern English, we look at the relevant data from Shakespeare – where an interesting study looks at the cooccurrence of thou/you forms with different nominal terms of address – from salutations and subscriptions in personal letters, and from vocatives in trial transcripts.

7.2 Case Study: Lady

As an illustration of change in terms of address, let’s consider the address term lady (OED, s.v. lady, n.). This term was used in medieval and early modern times as the female equivalent of lord. It functioned as an honorific form of address for a woman of distinction (the female head of a household; a female ruler, a queen; a member of the nobility, the wife or daughter of a duke, baron, earl, viscount, etc.); in courtly love, the name was conferred upon the object of the nobleman’s affection. It was typically used deferentially, often with a positive adjective such as gentle or noble, see (1a) where the Host is addressing the Prioress (in the Canterbury Tales) or (1b) where Gratiano is addressing Portia (in The Merchant of Venice). However, it could also be used with negative adjectives to express anger, when the Earl of Gloucester is addressing Regan (in King Lear) (1c) or in an ironic way when Prince Henry addresses Mistress Quickly, the innkeeper (in Henry IV, Part 1) (1d). In Present-day English, lady may still be used to denote a woman of rank (1e) or distinction, as in the “First Lady” of the United States. (Though the origin of her name is disputed, Stefani Germanotta, aka Lady Gaga, claims to have chosen “Lady” because “Lady has such connotations.”Footnote ¹)

1. 1. a. “My lady Prioresse, by youre leve,/ So that I wiste I sholde yow nat greve,/ I wold demen that ye tellen sholde/ A tale next, if so were that ye wolde. (1387 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales B.Sh 447–50)

      ‘My lady Prioress, by your leave, if I knew I should not grieve you, I would judge that you should tell a tale next, if it were so that you would’

   2. b. Gratiano: My lord Bassanio and my gentle lady,/ I wish you all the joy that you can wish; (1596–97 Merchant of Venice III.ii; OSS)

   3. c. Earl of Gloucester: Naughty lady,/ These hairs which thou dost ravish from my chin/ Will quicken, and accuse thee. (1605–6 King Lear III.vii; OSS)

   4. d. Hostess Quickley: O Jesu, my lord the prince!

      Henry V: How now, my lady the hostess! what sayest thou to me? (1596–7 Henry IV, Part I II.iv; OSS; quoted from U. Reference BusseBusse 2003: 198–199)

   5. e. 7th Caller: Evansville, Indiana I was wondering, Lady Thatcher, do you have a hobby? (1995 CNN_King; COCA)

Lady is now more often used in polite contexts without any reference to rank (as in 2a). In such cases, there may be an implication that the lady possesses genteel qualities, as shown in the quotation in (2b).

1. 1. a. Martin: … Thank you, ladies, so much for joining us. Ms-Waters: Thank you for having me. Ms-Swank: Thank you so much. (2010 Tell Me More; COCA)

   2. b. “Doctor, don’t you offer chairs to ladies?” “Certainly. If they are ladies.” (1970 Hazzard, Bay of Noon; COHA)

Ladies and gentlemen is a vocative used in formal contexts (3a), and the expression may also be used entirely formulaically, especially in welcoming addresses, with bleaching of the honorific aspect. Nonetheless, the sense of ladies (and gentlemen) as referring to people of distinction or refinement is not entirely lost (see 3b).

1. 1. a. Your Excellency, Mr. Mayor, Governor Pataki, Senators Schumer and Clinton, distinguished guests on the dais, ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to join you this evening. (2001 Fox_HC; COCA)

   2. b. Well, our patrons are ladies and gentlemen, and they’ll ignore any protesters that may be there. (2002 Associated Press: An Interview with Augusta’s Hootie Johnson; COCA)

Lady has undergone pejoration as a term of address, when it is used in bare form with “overtones of brusqueness or hostility” (OED, s.v. lady, n., def. 4), as in “Hey, lady” or “Look, lady.” This usage appears in the first quarter of the twentieth century (4a). Polite uses of bare lady can occur but seem dialectal (4b).

1. 1. a. Hey, lady, you better answer to what I ask him. (1932 Number 17; Movies)

   2. b. Gee, please, lady, can I have a dance?’ (1992 NPR_ATC; COCA)

Young lady and little lady are often impolite terms of address, used in cases of anger or impatience (5a) or in a patronizing manner (5b); young lady is rarely used in a neutral sense (5c) except when plural (several young ladies were present).

1. 1. a. Go to your room, young lady, you’re grounded.” (2007 CBS SatEarly; COCA)

   2. b. You’ll recognize it, little lady, when you see it. There is nothing in the world looks like it except more gold (1998 ABC_GMA; COCA)

   3. c. Good for you, young lady. I am glad. (2002 Literary Review; COCA)

Finally, since the rise of feminism in the 1960s there has been a reaction against the use of lady as a synonym for woman since the genteel qualities it seems to imply (of a demure, modest, or subservient creature) are seen as demeaning and patronizing.Footnote ² There is also a sense that it objectifies women as sexual objects. This backlash can be seen in (6a), where the older Terry Gross is questioning the younger Lena Dunham about the name of her television series, Girls. The use of ladies in service contexts (where “polite” forms are used between both server and customer and customer and server; see Reference Leech, Hasselgård and OksefjellLeech 1999: 112–113) points to the difficulty it can cause for nonbinary and trans people (6b).

1. 1. a. When I was in my late teens and 20s, my friends and I insisted on calling each other and having other people call us women. It was the era of the women’s movement, and we weren’t girls, we were women, and we certainly weren’t dames, we were women, and we weren’t, like, ladies, we were women. (2013 Fresh Air; COCA)

   2. b. For example, like, once I start to see myself as nonbinary, if a host at a restaurant says, right this way, ladies, I just, like – I start to get really angry ’cause I’m like, I’m dressed like a man. (2017 Fresh Air; COCA)

7.3 Pronominal Terms of Address – Approaches

In a landmark article, Reference Brown, Gilman and SebeokBrown and Gilman (1960) discuss the origin of the politeness uses of the second-person pronouns, which they describe as T and V (using the Latin pronouns, singular tu and plural vos). The plural form was used to address the Latin emperor in the fourth century. In the medieval vernacular languages, this usage spread to other figures of power, including within the family, though Brown and Gilman admit that “[t]here was much inexplicable fluctuation between T and V” (255). The usage in medieval Europe was based on an asymmetric “power semantic”: the superior says T and receives V. Also, among equals, V was used in the upper classes and T in the lower classes. While this system holds in a relatively static and hierarchical society, Brown and Gilman see it gradually being replaced by a symmetrical “solidarity semantic” as social mobility and equalitarianism grow. Here, among equals, differences (which are not based on power) lead to the use of V and similarities lead to the use of T. But the spread of this system to unequals puts the two systems in conflict in two cases: when an inferior addresses a superior with whom they are in solidarity (is the V of the power system or the T of the solidarity system appropriate?) and when a superior addresses an inferior with whom they are not in solidarity (is the T of the power system or the V of the solidarity system appropriate?). These are resolved in favor of solidarity, so, for example, a child uses T to a parent and an employer uses V to an employee, respectively. The triumph of the solidarity principle gives rise to the informal/formal T/V distinction we see at work in modern European languages such as French, German, and Italian. But Brown and Gilman recognize that English followed a rather different path in which the two-tier system was lost. They also recognize that violations of the norms of usage can have expressive effects, such as the use of T (in place of V) to express contempt and anger, or the use of V (in place of T) to express admiration or respect.

The apparent lack of systematicity in the use of second-person pronouns in Middle and Early Modern English calls into question the validity of the Brown and Gilman model. As Lass notes, English never developed a rigid hierarchical opposition, but rather functioned with a “loose, unstable and pragmatically more subtle” system (Reference Lass and Lass1999: 149). Especially problematic are the frequent and apparently arbitrary fluctuations between the pronouns that we see in English. This is what Reference Brown and GilmanBrown and Gilman (1989: 178) call “retractability,” the possibility for speakers to switch back and forth between you and thou, even within the same turn. Retractability distinguishes the English system from the systems found in modern European languages, where once the shift from formal to familiar occurs, there can be no change back. Reference WalesWales (1983) argues that Brown and Gilman’s system cannot explain the fluctuations in English, nor can it explain the emotive functions of thou. For Brown and Gilman, the emotive use arises out of the “solidarity semantic” which comes to replace the “power semantic,” but in English we see the two types of uses coexisting in the medieval period. Wales argues, rather, that the use of thou “for the expression of deep emotions and intimacy of feeling is the natural outcome of its common occurrence in informal, especially private speech” (115). While you would be associated with “polite” usage, thou would be “non-polite” (either familiar or non-polite).

An alternative approach to understanding the use of the second-person pronouns is in terms of markedness. This concept was first introduced by Reference Quirk, Muir and SchoenbaumQuirk (1971). He argues that you is unmarked, “not so much ‘polite’ as ‘not impolite’ … [and] not so much ‘formal’ and ‘not informal’.” This means that thou is the marked or “conspicuous” form that serves a number of special functions: to mark solemnity and formality in religious discourse, and to express contempt, anger, intimacy, (filial) affection, and so on. The concept of markedness here has been criticized, perhaps unfairly. It is said that this theory reduces thou to expressive uses and that it fails to recognize that you may be marked in certain contexts. But Quirk recognizes that the use of thou and you is a matter of “active contrast”: both the use of thou where you is expected and the use of you where thou is expected can carry special meaning. It is also argued that the norm/deviant model suggested by the concept of markedness cannot explain the frequent examples of switching found in literary texts. While this is perhaps true – because as we will see below, interpreting such switches in Shakespeare in particular depends on complex literary interpretations of character and plot – the concept of markedness provides a useful benchmark for measuring the use of you and thou.

7.4 The Thou/You Distinction in Middle English

There is no evidence in Old English for a distinction between þū and ʒē other than for one of number. But sporadic uses of singular ye begin to appear in early Middle English, and by the fourteenth century, it is common, especially among the upper ranks: by one scholar’s count there are 1,426 instances of singular ye/you/your and 1,734 instances of singular thou/thee/thy in Chaucer’s work (Reference Mazzon, Kastovsky and MettingerMazzon 2000: 136). The medieval system is succinctly expressed by Walter Skeat in his edition of Chaucer’s works:

By the fifteenth century, we find instances of the verbs thouen ‘to address (a person) with the pronoun thou, esp. as a sign of familiarity or contempt’ (MED, s.v. thouen; OED, s.v. thou, v.) and yēen ‘to address (a person) by the pronoun you, esp. as a mark or respect, deference, or formality’ (MED, s.v. yēen; OED, s.v. you, v.) .

What has puzzled scholars about Middle English is the flexibility of second-person pronominal usage and its apparent randomness, especially the “retractability” of the system, involving switches back and forth between you and thou among the same interlocutors, even in the same turn. Reference BurnleyBurnley (1983, Reference Burnley2003) establishes a flowchart to explain the usage of thou and ye in Chaucer (see Figure 7.1). The criteria determining usage include power, familiarity, intimacy, age, and status as well as genre. He makes a distinction between non-courtly genres (learned, religious, and “unsophisticated” discourse among the peasant class), where thou is the norm, and courtly genres, where an unfamiliar addressee is always addressed as ye and a familiar addressee receives thou or ye depending on intimacy, age, and social status. The diagonal line path represents the choice made when any one or more of these criteria are not salient; that is, ye is the norm. This use of ye is a reflection of negative politeness (see Chapter 5), or “part of the value system which medieval people called curtesie,” the code of deference and respect (Reference Burnley2003: 35). Importantly, Burnley also recognizes that speakers may choose pronominal forms that do not follow the flowchart but are “contextually determined”; that is, there are no “unbreakable rules” in Middle English. He divides these non-conforming choices into “affective,” “rhetorical,” and “genre” switches. The affective switch from thou to ye may indicate detachment, distancing, formality, objectivity, rejection, or repudiation. The switch from ye to thou may be used to intimidate or insult, to address children, or in a joking or patronizing way. It may also express solidarity or intimacy. Rhetorical switches refer to role-playing, or changes in modes of address, as in an adult being addressed in the mode appropriate for a child, or an equal addressed in the mode appropriate for an inferior. Finally, the genre criterion refers to different pronominal uses promoted by different genres, such as the fabliaux, heroic tales, courtly romances, saints’ lives, sermons, and so on. The many factors involved in the use of thou and ye and the changes the system undergoes during the ME period leave Burnley skeptical about the possibility of explaining all instances of pronominal usage.

Figure 7.1 Flowchart for the use of thou and ye in Middle English (from Reference BurnleyBurnley 2003: 29)

(David Reference BurnleyBurnley. 2003. The T/V pronouns in Middle English literature. In Irma Taavitsainen and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.), Diachronic perspectives on address term systems. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 29. https://benjamins.com/catalog/pbns.107.03bur. Reprinted with permission.)

In a series of articles, Reference Jucker, Dalton-Puffer and RittJucker (2000b, Reference Jucker2006b, Reference Jucker2020) argues that pronoun usage in Middle English is “more principled than previously assumed” (Reference Jucker2020: 54). He sees three factors determining pronoun usage:

• social status;

• the relation between interactants; and

• situational status.

The first two are both relatively stable and fixed, though Jucker differs from Burnley in seeing the latter as scalar, not binary. He agrees that familiarity, social status, and age are basic criteria, but for him, interactional status – which incorporates both the affective and rhetorical criteria identified by Burnley – is the most important dimension and may override the others. Interactional status is temporary and unstable, with interactants having to make “on-the-spot” choices between pronoun forms, depending on how the interaction is developing. Thus, he brings Burnley’s affective and rhetorical factors to the fore, giving them precedence over the relatively stable norms set out in Figure 7.1. But knowledge of these stable norms must, I would argue, underlie any on-the-spot decision to either conform with or flout expected usage. Reference JuckerJucker (2006b, Reference Jucker2020) analyzes episodes from several tales in the Canterbury Tales (see also Reference Mazzon, Kastovsky and MettingerMazzon 2000). Unlike Burnley and other scholars who consider pronoun choice to be a matter of default choices with deviations, Jucker believes that the analysis of individual dialogues is necessary on the micro-level. For example, in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” when the Knight meets the old woman who will ultimately help him answer the question he has been posed (“What do women most desire?”), they initially address each other deferentially with ye. As the old woman realizes her power over the Knight, she begins to address him with thou (7a). In addressing the queen, the Knight, of course, uses the deferential ye (7b). Later the old woman reminds the Knight that he must fulfill his promise to marry her, and she again uses thou (7c), though in combination with the deferential sir knyght. Once married, however, the old woman treats the Knight with the deference due husbands by addressing him as ye (7d). The Knight is unhappy in this marriage because of his wife’s age and ugliness: So wo was hym, his wyf looked so foule. ‘So woeful was he, his wife looked so ugly’. In this context, he addresses her as thou (7e). After being chastised by the old woman and lectured on the nature of nobility, the Knight realizes the need to cede power to her; this again leads to the use of deferential ye along with highly deferential nominal terms of address (7f).

1. 1. a. “Plight me thy trouthe heere in myn hand,” quod she, (l. 1009)

      ‘“Pledge your word to me here in my hand” she said,’

   2. b. “Dooth as yow list; I am heer at youre wille.” (l. 1042)

      ‘“Do as you please; I am here subject to your will.”’

   3. c. “Bifore the court thanne preye I thee, sir knyght,”/ Quod she, “that thou me take unto thy wyf; (ll. 1054–5)

      ‘“Before the court then I pray you, sir knight,”/ Said she, “that thou take me as thy wife,’

   4. d. And seyde, “O deere housbonde, benedicitee!/ Fareth every knyght thus with his wyf as ye?” (ll. 1087–8)

      ‘And said, “O dear husband, bless me! Does every knight behave in this way with his wife as you do?”’

   5. e. “Thou art so loothly, and so oold also,/ … That litel wonder is thogh I walwe and wynde.” (ll. 1100–2)

      ‘“You art so loathsome, and so old also, … . That there is little wonder is though I toss and twist about.”’

   6. f. “My lady and my love, and wyf so deere,/ I put me in youre wise governance;” (ll. 1230–1)

      ‘“My lady and my love, and wife so dear, I put myself in your wise governance;”’

Jucker’s claim is that ye is a marker of deference (of politeness and respect), often associated with the speaker’s inferiority, but it is not a marker of distance. Thou is used when no deference is needed, and in situations of the speaker’s superiority. Jucker does not see affection and intimacy, which have been suggested as underlying the use of thou in non-canonical contexts, as explanatory principles; he points out, for example, that husbands and wives typically use ye to each other out of respect, but this does not indicate a lack of affection.

7.5 The Thou/You Distinction in Early Modern English

The use of you and thou in Early Modern English has been the subject of exhaustive scholarly study and debate, in main focused on usage in Shakespeare, where switches between the pronouns among interlocutors are frequent, and affective uses are complex and subject to varying interpretations. As Roger Lass observes, “The history of this system is intricate and not well understood (alternatively, not entirely coherent)” (Reference Lass and Lass1999: 148). What all scholars seem to agree on is that the change to singular you was well under way in the sixteenth century, with you the choice for the middle and upper ranks of society and increasingly also for the lower classes. You outnumbered thou. Thou, though it could denote asymmetries in rank, was very frequently used to express heightened emotion. During the seventeenth century thou retreated to specialized (religious and literary) contexts and dialectal use. Thus, Shakespeare wrote during a crucial time in the development of the second-person pronominal system. However, we cannot be confident that Shakespeare’s literary usage actually represents contemporary norms; it has been suggested that it might be old-fashioned, overusing thou forms, which are recessive by his time. It has even been claimed that it “is unlikely to mirror actual usage in the Early Modern period” (Reference HopeHope 2003: 77). The partial and perhaps biased nature of literary evidence (such as Shakespearian usage) is thus evidence of the “bad data” problem that historical pragmaticists must contend with (see Chapter 2, §2.5). For this reason, we try to garner as much and as varied evidence as possible and, more importantly, look at what we know about the use of thou and you in records of actual speech of the period, that is, in trials, depositions (written transcripts of oral statements made by witnesses, plaintiffs, and defendants), and personal letters. Although we cannot know what changes have been introduced by transcribers and scribes in these records (further aspects of the bad data problem), we can be fairly confident that we are close to the authentic speech of the period.

7.6 Nominal Terms of Address in Present-day English

A vocative can be defined as follows: “an optional element, usually a noun phrase, denoting the one or more persons to whom the sentence is addressed. It is either a CALL, drawing the attention of the person or persons addressed, singling them out from others in hearing … or an ADDRESS, expressing the speaker’s relationship or attitude to the person or persons addressed” (Reference Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and SvartvikQuirk et al. 1985: 773). Among the three functions – getting someone’s attention, identifying someone as the addressee, and establishing or reinforcing social relationships – it is the last which often determines which vocative term is used: “vocative terms generally convey a considerable amount about the speaker’s social relations or emotive attitude toward the address, and their primary or sole purpose is often to give expression to this kind of meaning” (Reference Huddleston and PullumHuddleston and Pullum 2002: 523).

Most vocatives can be used in two ways, as vocatives proper (18a) and as referring terms (18b); however, some are more often vocative than referring (e.g., Mommy) and others are more often referring than vocative (e.g., niece).

1. 1. a. You forget, cousin, how very little any man might have to gain by compromising me.” (2012 Archer, Demon’s Bride; COCA)

   2. b. My cousin Anatoly said I could trust him. (2019 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; COCA)

Vocatives fall into a number of different categories, as shown in Table 7.1. Most vocatives can be expanded by (a range of) modifiers: good Margaret, you smart young fellow, my dear old friend, you filthy liar, my sweet love.

The use of first names is becoming increasingly common in Present-day English and has become almost the norm (see Chapter 5, §5.8, on “Camaraderie Politeness”). In Leech’s study (1999), first names (full and shortened) represent 60 percent of the vocatives used, while title + surname combinations are less than 5 percent and honorifics less than 1 percent. The use of the last name alone is receding, but may still be found in male (or female)-bonding in contexts such as boarding schools, sports teams, or the military. Use of the full name is restricted to certain contexts. Some kinship terms, such as Mother or Daddy, have become proper nouns (19a), but other kinship names seldom function this way (e.g., daughter). In contemporary discourse, familiarizers are also becoming increasingly common, especially in American English. In Leech’s corpus study, familiarizers constitute 22 percent of all vocatives; they express camaraderie rather than intimacy and may be somewhat disrespectful (19b). Guys is often thought to be gender-neutral (19c) (though a recent informal poll of my Canadian undergraduate students suggests this is not the case). Note that familiarizers (like honorifics, endearments, epithets, especially unfavorable ones, and second-person pronouns) do not require that the speaker know the addressee, while others (personal names and kinship terms) do require the speaker and addressee to be acquainted (or introduced).

1. 1. a. And he said to her, You know, Mother, I am not a comedian. (2003 NPR_TalkNation; COCA)

   2. b. “No offense, guys, but we need some new blood.” (2019 Campbell, Quarterway House; COCA)

   3. c. Jenna-Bush-Hager: Welcome back this Tuesday. Meredith is in for Hoda. Earlier, guys, I spit out my gum in a little piece of paper (2019 NBC_Today; COCA)

With the increase of familiarizers and first names, honorific titles have declined and become more marked. Thus, we find a “progressive familiarization of addressing and naming habits” (Reference Leech, Hasselgård and OksefjellLeech 1999: 114), with familiarizers, endearments, and kinship terms twice as common as honorifics and title + surname combinations. Honorific titles and occupational titles, which frequently overlap, may be used either alone or in conjunction with names (20a–b). Some titles (professor, doctor, vicar) are applied at all times, while others only when the person is acting in that capacity (cabbie, waiter, conductor).

1. 1. a. Martin: So given all that, Professor, what is your take on the students’ decision to paint over the poem with one of their choosing? (2018 NPR_ATCW; COCA)

   2. b. Mr-Mac-Neil: What do you see, Father Greeley, as the Pope’s role in the political debate in America right now on welfare programs? (1995 PBS_Newshour; COCA)

Endearments and positive epithets also overlap. Endearments signal affection and intimacy, though many are used as conventionalized terms of address (such as love in British English or dear in American English) (compare 21a and 21b).

1. 1. a. Every time Isabelle said, “Kelle, I need this or I want that,” he’d be like, “Okay, here, dear, here’s the credit card.” (2009 ABC_20/20; COCA)

   2. b. Out to the lines. Christine in Louisiana. Hi, Christine. Hi, dear, whats [sic] your question? (2011 CNN_Grace; COCA)

An epithet expresses “some quality or attribute which the speaker or writer regards as characteristic of the person or thing described” (OED, s.v. epithet, n., def. 1a). Note that favorable epithets often occur with my, unfavorable with you (22a–b). The use of the second-person pronouns as vocatives is “markedly impolite,” according to Reference Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and SvartvikQuirk et al. (1985), as are indefinites (22c):

1. 1. a. “Let me tell your fortune, my beauty,” she said. # I waved my hand at her. (2003 Success d’Estime; COCA)

   2. b. Sledge hung from the door of the car and shouted. “Hey, you, jackass! You up there in the cab. Both your pals are dead.” (2001 Jakes, On Secret Service; COCA)

   3. c. “So tell me, whoever you are,” she went on, “what are you doing here in the middle of the night?” (2004 Wolitzer, The Wife: A Novel; COCA)

Terms of address exist on a scale from closest/most familiar and intimate to most remote/least friendly/most respectful. Reference Leech, Hasselgård and OksefjellLeech (1999) suggests the following ordering:

• endearments > family terms (e.g., mommy, grandma, dad) > familiarizers > familiarized first names (i.e., shortened and pet names) > full first names > titles + surname > honorifics

It is possible to equate this to a scale ranging from positive politeness (expressing camaraderie or solidarity) to negative politeness (expressing deference and respect), as was discussed in Chapter 5. In her study of Early Modern English, Reference Raumolin-Brunberg, Nevalainen and Raumolin-BrunbergRaumolin-Brunberg (1996: 171) suggests a scale, encompassing both adjectival modifiers and nominal terms of address. Most positively polite are terms of endearment and nicknames collated with positive adjectives such as kind and loving. Somewhat less positive are family terms. Moving toward the negative end of the scale, we find titles (e.g., captain), and at the far end of the negative scale are honorific titles (lord) and respect adjectives (e.g., worshipful, honored). Below we look in more detail at how this can be applied to historical stages of English.

7.7 Nominal Terms of Address in Old and Middle English

Historically, the study of nominal address terms has focused on two areas: represented speech (in narrative and drama) and personal letters. One rewarding area of study has examined the interaction of nominal terms with the pronominal forms, you and thou.

Only one study has researched the use of nominal terms of address in Old English. Reference KohnenKohnen (2008b) focuses on three positive address terms, all of which occur primarily in religious texts: leof ‘dear one’, broþor ‘brother’, and hlaford ‘lord’. Leof may be used by superiors to subordinates and vice versa; it may thus combine with intimate or family terms (bearn ‘child’, cild ‘child’, dohter ‘daughter’), neutral terms (men), and authoritative terms (cyning ‘king’, hlaford). Broþor may indicate a blood brother, a fellow Christian, or a member of a religious order. Both broþor and leof express friendliness and affection. Hlaford is used to address God, Jesus, and saints, and in its rare uses as a term of address outside religious texts it indicates a fixed rank in a hierarchical society. Kohnen concludes that whereas the use of broþor and leof may represent positive politeness, it is more correct to see all three terms as a case of “discernment politeness” (see Chapter 5, §5.4), in which the speaker recognizes the principles of mutual obligation and kin loyalty which guide life in the hierarchical society of Early Medieval England (see Chapter 6, §6.5, on directives).

In Middle English we find a much expanded set of nominal terms of address, ranging from deference to endearment, which point to a system of positive/negative politeness at work. However, scholarly work in this area remains scant, with a focus on individual fictional texts. Making generalizations can be difficult since the address terms used are often negotiated in context or may be used ironically or parodically. As Mazzon observes, “the pragmatic element of the situation seems as important as the social status of the addressee” (Reference Mazzon, Kastovsky and Mettinger2000: 149). Nonetheless, considering the cooccurrence of address terms with you and thou in the Canterbury Tales, Mazzon is able to identify a number of terms as deferential (mostly occurring with you), including sire, lord, lady, dame, madame, and maister, and a number of non-deferential and intimate terms, including freend, brother, cook, squyer ‘squire’, somnour ‘summoner’, messager ‘messenger’, juge ‘judge’, prest ‘priest’, as well as terms of abuse and endearment. First names are used among intimates, generally in the lower classes. Already in Middle English, sire is being extended to men of all ranks as a polite term of address, as we see in this address of the Host to the socially lowly ranked shipman. Note the cooccurrence of polite maister and familiar thou:

1. (23) “Wel seyd, by corpus dominus,” quod oure Hoost,/ “Now longe moote thou saille by the cost/ Sire gentil maister, gentil maryneer!” (1387 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales B.Sh 435–7)

   ‘“Well said, by the body of our Lord,” said our Host, “Now long may you sail by the coast, Sir gentle master, gentle mariner!”’

Given the complexity of thou/you use in Middle English, however (see above), we can find subtly nuanced interactions between nominal and pronominal address terms. For example, Palamon addressing his cousin Arcite (both knights) in “The Knight’s Tale” uses thou in combination with my leeve brother to express solidarity (24a) but thou in combination with false Arcite to express contempt (24b) (Reference HoneggerHonegger 2003).

1. 1. a. Neither of us in love to hyndre oother,/ Ne in noon oother cas, my leeve brother;/ But that thou sholdest trewely forthren me (1387 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales A.Kn 1135–1137)

      ‘Neither of us in love should hinder the other, nor in any other case, my dear brother, But rather you should truly help me’

   2. b. Nay, certes, false Arcite, thow shalt nat so. (1387 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales A.Kn 1145)

      ‘Nay, certainly, false Arcite, thou shalt not (do) so.’

While god(s) and goddesses are generally addressed with thou, Reference HoneggerHonegger (2003) finds interesting shifts between nominal and pronominal terms in Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale.” Addressing the goddess Diana, Emelye begins with the expected combination of goddess and thou, but shifts to lady and deferential you as the goddess is humanized. Honegger also discusses the shifting terms of address among lovers. In the initial stage of wooing, where lovers are negotiating their relationships, they focus on the social hierarchy and are concerned with saving negative face, using deferential terms such as dame/madam/lady with modifiers such as swete ‘sweet’, dere ‘dear’, and my and sir/lord with similarly positive adjectives. Once the relationship has been successfully established, the lovers switch to more familiar and intimate terms of address focused on positive face. These include designations of belovedness (lemman), sweetness (sweting), preciousness (dere), importance (herte), joy (joye), respect (sire), and so on.

7.8 Nominal Terms of Address in Early Modern English

Shakespeare:

One branch of scholarship on vocatives in Early Modern English has focused on the extremely rich inventory of naming forms in Shakespeare. B. Reference BusseBusse (2006) finds 3,111 different types of vocatives in seventeen plays by Shakespeare, averaging about 500 tokens per play. For Reference ReplogleReplogle (1973), vocatives in Shakespeare “minutely trace all the vagaries of the political and social hierarchy” (172). Elizabethans were punctilious in their use of titles; usage was highly codified, taught in etiquette handbooks, and learned from childhood. Superiors were addressed with the honorific form corresponding to their highest honor, equals with more abbreviated forms, and inferiors with regular forms or no forms at all. Change in status, whether involving gain or loss, was properly denoted. Deviations from proper usage “made natural vehicles for dramatic emphasis which Shakespeare assumed his audience understood and which he fully exploited” (181). For example, inappropriate use of titles, such as the use of overly familiar forms, could constitute an insult. Omission of forms of address indicated extreme distress and lack of self-possession. Or the use of forms could indicate character, such as Mistress Quickly’s overuse of vocatives as an indication of her status as a social climber (in Henry IV, Part 2). Reference SalmonSalmon (1967) provides an inventory of vocatives in Shakespeare; she includes personal names, relationship terms, generic terms of address (e.g., man, woman, gentleman/woman, gentles, boy, lad, maid, wench), terms indicating occupations, titles of courtesy (e.g., lord, lady, sir, madam, mistress, sirrah, goodman/wife, dame), and terms of endearment (e.g., sweet, wag, bully, chuck, my joy, my heart) and of abuse (e.g., knave, rascal, rogue, slave, varlet, villain) (see also Reference MazzonMazzon 2003; U. Reference BusseBusse 2003: 196). Reference Brown and GilmanBrown and Gilman (1989) attempt to assign titles in Shakespeare absolute values based on power and distance: an adorned title (e.g., gentle lady) is +2, an unadorned title (e.g., madam), an honorific adjective and name (e.g., good Hamlet), and a name alone when used as an in-group marker are +1 or otherwise a neutral 0, while sirrah is −1. However, such a rigid scale is obviously unworkable. In a monograph-length study of vocatives in Shakespeare, B. Reference BusseBusse (2006) presents a detailed picture of vocatives as experiential, interpersonal, and textual markers that are highly multifunctional:

[Vocatives] are crucial to how interactants accumulate symbolic capital, construe their emotions, their relationships, their attitudes, their character, and their habitus … Vocatives construe the interplay between macro-contextual factors (institutions, power, social order) and micro-contextual aspects of the immediate situation

(see Reference Busse and BusseBusse and Busse 2010: 258–259).

As in Present-day English, the value of address terms was not fixed. They could express a range of meanings in use; for example, sirrah could be used authoritatively, contemptuously, familiarly, or in a playful manner. Reference Crystal and CrystalCrystal and Crystal (2002: 8) conclude that for Shakespeare “[t]he naming practice performs a variety of expressive functions, shading from courtesy through endearment into sarcasm and insult.”

U. Reference BusseBusse (2002: Ch. 6, Reference Busse2003) is a systematic study of the relation of nominal terms of address (omitting personal names) and thou/you pronouns in Shakespeare. He finds that there is no absolute correlation between categories of vocatives and the two pronouns, but all vocatives exist on a scale of “thoufulness” or “youfulness.” As would be expected, titles of courtesy, names of occupations, and terms denoting family relationships are strongly youful, while generic terms, terms of abuse, and terms of endearment are strongly thouful. But within each category, there is a range from thou to you cooccurrence, which demonstrates the nuanced differences between vocatives. For example, although you is the normal pronoun used with lady, there are several occasions where thou is used by a male speaker to a lady of rank, such as to a lover, from a husband to a wife, or from a royal father to a daughter. This makes it less youful than mistress. Terms of family relationships range on the youful scale from the highest (sister, brother) to the lowest (husband, wife). Husband and wife are almost equally balanced between the two pronouns, with frequent pronoun switches; this variability leads U. Busse to think that relationship was highly “negotiable.” But there is not entire consistency here between the findings in the plays and findings in correspondence (see below). In between these two sets are cousin and coz. In earlier English, cousin/coz had much wider use than in Present-day English, applied to a range of relatives and in-laws as well as to non-relatives of the same rank (see Reference HäckerHäcker 2019). Perhaps most surprising are U. Busse’s findings concerning generic terms and terms of abuse, which both present a very mixed bag. For the latter, see Figure 7.2 (here a logarithmic scale is used; i.e., +1000 means that you is 10 times more frequent than thou, and −1000 means that thou is 10 times more frequent than you for the particular term). Rogue, rascal, and to a lesser extent knave could be used less abusively. Rogue can cooccur with both negative (damnable, bastardly) and positive (sweet little, poor) adjectives. While it may be used in cases of serious abuse (in conjunction with thou), rogue as well as rascal may also be used in a playful, even endearing manner to denote a mischievous person. Both rogue and knave can be used to chide a servant, in which case they occur with you.

Figure 7.2 Terms of abuse on the scale from you to thou cooccurrence in Shakespeare (adapted from U. Reference BusseBusse 2003: 213)

(Ulrich Reference BusseBusse. 2003. The co-occurrence of nominal and pronominal address forms in the Shakespeare corpus: Who says thou or you to whom? In Irma Taavitsainen and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.). 2003. Diachronic perspectives on address term systems. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 213. https://benjamins.com/catalog/pbns.107.10bus. Reprinted with permission.)

What has been the fate of the multitude of address terms found in Shakespeare? We find a number of changes affecting terms of address (see Reference SalmonSalmon 1967: 49–54, 56–59; Reference Crystal and CrystalCrystal and Crystal 2002: 8–9):

• loss or obsolescence: ancient (=ensign), biddy ‘chicken’, bully ‘sweetheart, fine fellow’, coz (now used colloquially for cousin), gallant ‘fine gentleman’, gentles ‘people of good birth’, goodman ‘male head of household’, goodwife ‘female head of household’, gossip ‘friend, neighbor’, masters (plural of master), sirrah, and endearments such as bawcock ‘fine fellow’ (from French beau coq ‘fine hen’), chuck (from chick), sweeting, wag ‘fellow’;

• extension in meaning, from men and women of high rank to men and women more generally (no longer dependent on land ownership), as a polite term of address: dame, lady, master, mistress, sir; or other kinds of extension: captain ‘senior person, no particular rank’;

• pejoration of meaning: dame ‘old hag’, goodman (a term for one below the rank of gentleman), lording (a lord > a term of contempt for a minor or inferior lord), sirrah (a term for boys > a term of contempt for men).

7.9 Chapter Summary

This chapter covered the following topics:

• ways to understand the second-person (thou/you, T/V) distinction in respect to power/solidarity, and markedness;

• thou/you in Middle English, where power, intimacy, age, rank, and interactional status all contribute to the choice of pronoun, with “retractability” (switches in pronoun use) often motivated by affect, rhetorical function, or genre;

• thou/you in Early Modern English, where a change in progress (loss of thou), the partial nature of available data, and genre differences together present a complex picture:

  1. ◦ the loss of thou being more rapid in trial records than in depositions, with regional differences;

  2. ◦ you being the preferred form in letters throughout the period, with thou continuing to be used;

  3. ◦ you being the majority form in Shakespeare, with genre differences (e.g., comedy vs. history) and frequent switches (retractability) serving subtle purposes of plot and characterization;

• the rich vocative system of Present-day English, ranging from endearments to honorifics;

• the expanding set of vocative terms from Old English to Middle English;

• the rich inventory of vocatives in Early Modern English, with great attention to different genres:

  1. ◦ the elaborate set of vocatives used in letters showing a change over the period to more positively polite (familial, affectionate), syntactically simpler, and more routinized naming forms;

  2. ◦ in Shakespeare, a relative but not absolute relation between thou/you forms and different vocatives;

• change toward the use of personal names (especially first names), kinship terms, “familiarizers” (e.g., guys, dude), and endearments and decline in the use of titles and honorifics in Present-day English, both characteristic of “camaraderie politeness” (see Chapter 5, §5.8).