This paper investigates the use of my as part of address formulae, which has been defined as part of a conventionalized formula (Nevala 2004), or as a marker of intensified intimacy and affection (Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 1995). Although Busse (2006) describes the meaning of my in a limited number of contexts, a systematic analysis is lacking. The aim of this paper is to identify my’s functional profile by comparing the use of my dear and dear, as well as my lord/lady and your lordship/ladyship. These alternating pairs have been selected because my occurs primarily in these contexts.

Our corpus consists of eight British English plays published between 1899 and 1912. For each conversational turn, address terms have been identified, as well as the relation between speaker and addressee. The speaker-addressee relation is described in terms of the traditional power and solidarity dimensions (following Buyle & De Smet 2018). In order to account for variation between address terms in the same speaker-addressee relation (i.e. in contexts marked by the same power and solidarity values), speech acts have been identified and organized according to Leech’s classification of illocutionary functions (1983).

Results show that my has a clear functional profile. My dear is more frequent than dear in turns marked as downward and with conflictive speech acts, while dear occurs more often in level interactions with collaborative and convivial speech acts. My lord/lady is most frequent with collaborative, convivial and conflictive speech acts, while your lordship/ladyship is the preferable option with competitive speech acts.

These results demonstrate that power and solidarity are relevant parameters for the analysis of nominal address terms (Brown & Ford 1961), but a systematic speech act analysis can contribute to revealing functional differences as well (Martiny 1996).

References

• Brown, R. & M. Ford. 1961. Address in American English. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 62: 375-385.
• Busse, B. 2006. Vocative constructions in the language of Shakespeare. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Buyle, A. & H. De Smet. 2018. Meaning in a changing paradigm: the semantics of you and the pragmatics of thou. Language Sciences 68: 42-55.
• Leech, G. 1983. Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.
• Martiny, T. 1996. Forms of address in French and Dutch: A sociopragmatic approach. Language Sciences 18: 765-775.
• Nevala, M. 2004. Accessing politeness axes: forms of address and terms of reference in early English correspondence. Journal of Pragmatics 36: 2125–2160.
• Nevalainen, T. & H. Raumolin-Brunberg. 1995. Constraints on politeness: the pragmatics of address formulae in early English correspondence. In Historical Pragmatics. Pragmatic Developments in the History of English. Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 35, A. H. Jucker (ed.), 541-601. John Benjamins: Amsterdam/Philadelphia.