The Cultural Semantics of Forms of Address

376 Pages·2017·2.78 MB·English

by  Gian Marco Farese

The Cultural Semantics of Forms of Address
A contrastive study between English and Italian

Gian Marco Farese

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
of the Australian National University

March 2017

©Copyright by Gian Marco Farese, 2017.
All rights reserved.
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Declaration

Unless otherwise stated, this thesis is entirely the result of my own work.

Signed: …………………………………………..
Name: …………………………………………..
Date: …………………………………………..

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Human Ethics Approval

Part of the linguistic data used in this study was obtained through elicitation tests
(questionnaires and informal surveys) for which Human Ethics Approval was necessary. The
data collection was approved by the ANU Human Research Ethics Committee, Protocol 2014-
_191.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study is the result of a wonderful three-year experience in Australia, where in addition to
the doctorate at the ANU I had the opportunity to teach Italian at various levels of education,
from primary to academic. I have learnt a lot about Australian culture and way more about my
own culture and society. It is so true that in leaving one’s homeland one learns to appreciate
one’s cultural heritage. I have never felt more Italian in my life than during these three years
Down Under. My research project was funded by the ANU University Research Scholarship.
I wish to thank all the people whom I have met at the ANU. My gratitude goes, in particular,
to the colleagues who have become friends: James Grieve, John Giacon, Mary Besemeres, Bert
Peeters, Helen Bromhead, Grazia Micciché, Piera Carroli, Carlo Dalle Ceste, Claudia Cialone
Matthew Callaghan and Lauren Sadow. I must also acknowledge the contribution and academic
stimulus which I received from the people who joined the Seminar on Semantics and the
discussion group on Christianity and Cross-Linguistic Semantics convened by Anna
Wierzbicka. My deepest gratitude to Anna De Meo, from L’Orientale University of Naples for
her invaluable help in collecting the data for my analysis, and to all the Italian friends who
kindly participated in the survey which I conducted.
Special thanks to my supervisors, who helped me grow academically and supported me
constantly throughout the doctorate. This study would not have been possible without you all.
Thanks to you, Zhengdao, for your expertise, availability and constant support. Thanks to you,
Cliff, for your precious advice and suggestions. And most of all thanks to you, Anna, for
everything which you have done for me and for invaluable analytical advice. Every discussion
has been a source of inspiration, and every analysis a new discovery.
Finally, thanks to my family, from the deep of my heart. I would not have gone to Australia
if it had not been for my dad. Thanks mum, and thank you, Piergiorgio. Vi voglio bene.

Gian Marco

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Abstract

This study analyses forms of address from both a semantic and cultural point of view with a
twofold aim: (i) to show that forms of address express a proper meaning which can be clearly
pinpointed with a suitable methodology; (ii) to highlight the differences in address practices of
different linguacultures and their implications for cross-cultural communication.
The approach taken is that of cultural semantics, the branch of linguistics which investigates
the relationship between meaning and culture. Combining semantics and cultural studies,
cultural semantics is closely related to various sub-branches of linguistics, most importantly
cross-cultural communication, intercultural pragmatics and translation theory. Researchers in
cultural semantics adopt the methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage created by
Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard and developed in collaboration with numerous academics
from around the world. Over decades of cross-linguistic research, NSM has proved itself an
optimal methodology to investigate the meanings of words in cross-linguistic perspective, in
particular emotion words, cultural keywords and more recently musical terms. The analysis of
forms of address is a new application of NSM, and in this case, too, the methodology has
proved itself the ideal tool for this purpose. To the best of my knowledge, never before in
address research has a scholar done an extended study of the meanings of address expressions
and the set of cultural values which guide address practices in a linguacultural world.
In line with NSM researchers, the premise to this study is that to pinpoint the meaning of
various address expressions and capture the cultural assumptions underlying address practices
in English and Italian, it is necessary to produce definitions which are comparable. This permits
to highlight the differences between the two linguacultures clearly and to provide language
learners and culture outsiders with optimal tools which they can use for cross-cultural training.
Although the present study is not written in the form of textbook, being based on NSM it is of
considerable pedagogical use. This study is aimed at a very wide readership which includes not
only scholars in linguistics, but anyone interested in issues in intercultural communication.
In Chapter 1 of the thesis, I review the main studies on address with particular attention to
those which are most pertinent to my analysis. In Chapter 2, I introduce the methodology of
semantic analysis which I adopted and present my body data. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the
“greetings” Hi and Ciao. In chapters 5 and 6 I analyse nouns used to address people in English
and Italian. Chapters 7 to 10 are dedicated to the analysis of the meaning of opening and closing
salutations in letters and e-mails and finally, Chapters 11 to 13 focus on cultural scripts and the
implications of differences in address practices for intercultural interactions.
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