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Further to Mike Salovesh's interesting observations concerning "old
U of Chicago traditions where the preferred terms of reference/address
were "Mr.","Mrs.", "Miss", or (latterly)
"Ms.", an important datum about these traditions (as I recall
from my student days at Chicago during 1968-77) was that these forms of
address were used reciprocally. The effect of this as I understood
it (perhaps with help from Brown and Ford 1961) was to index our
classroom interactions and the Chicago academic environment in general as
serious, high-powered stuff, while suppressing any overt recognition of
the hierarchical disparity between students and professors. This usage
was almost universal at Chicago at that time, an interesting exception
being the reciprocal use of first names between graduate students and
professors in the linguistics department. I believe this was an
innovation that had come only recently with the arrival of such young
Turks as Jim McCawley and Jerry Saddock. From more recent visits to
Chicago I know that at least some anthropology professors persist with
the reciprocal title-plus surname usage, but I would be interested to
hear from any of you who could fill us in more detail about
this.<br><br>
Yrs,<br>
Mr. Rumsey<br><br>
At 03:14 PM 7/20/2003 -0500, Mike Salovesh wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>YMMV -- or, rather, your local
dialect may vary.<br><br>
I was raised on some old U of Chicago traditions where the preferred
terms<br>
of reference/address were "Mr.",<br>
"Mrs.", "Miss", or (latterly) "Ms."
"Professor X" was an extremely rare<br>
usage. (It often was reserved for those who held named endowed chairs.)
As<br>
for "Doctor", there were four reasons for using the term. The
person so<br>
labeled might be<br><br>
1. some kind of medicine man or medicine woman. (Medical
doctor or<br>
dentist, usually, but various other bedoctored curing people and
medical<br>
-ologists also qualified.) That's because people in the curing
professions<br>
insist on the title. (A recent stay in a British hospital taught me
that<br>
senior professors in a medical school setting there are called "Mr.
X", a<br>
title that outranks a mere "Dr. X".)<br><br>
2. someone who just successfully defended a Ph. D. dissertation, in
which<br>
case the appropriate greeting was "Congratulations, Doctor!"
Usually, you<br>
only said that once.<br><br>
3. someone who was both a leading scholar (Nobel prize winner,
say),<br>
gifted with a lovable personality, and so awe-inspiring that there just
had<br>
to be some way of showing honor in a term of address. Or, anyhow, two
out<br>
of those three. Enrico Fermi was "Doctor Fermi". (In the
anthropology<br>
department, Robert Redfield often was called "Dr. Redfield".
You could<br>
measure students' progress through the department by when they moved
from<br>
"Mr. Tax" (or "Tax" as term of reference) to
"Sol Tax" to "Sol"; "Eggan/Mr.<br>
Eggan", "Fred Eggan", "Fred", etc. I don't
recall hearing anyone say "Bob<br>
Redfield" or addressing him as "Bob".)<br><br>
4. somebody who was snottily overreaching, in which case saying
"Dr. X"<br>
meant "And who the hell do you think you are,
DOCTOR?"<br><br>
That accounts for two features of my dialect down through the years.
First,<br>
I don't like being called "Doctor", since I don't fit those
first three<br>
categories and I don't want to be put in the fourth. Second, I am<br>
punctilious about calling any insufferably pompous professorial idiot
"Dr.<br>
X" -- repeatedly, just to make the point. (The best part of that is
that<br>
they never realize how deeply I'm insulting them.)<br>
<br>
-- mike salovesh
<m-salovesh-9@alumni.uchicago.edu> PEACE
!!!<br><br>
P.S.: I take that back. When I'm making appointments with
traditional<br>
medicine practitioners, I call myself "Dr. Salovesh" simply
because that<br>
makes it more likely that I'll get what I want. Those who work in
clinics,<br>
hospitals, or in any other setting where medical doctors practice
their<br>
arts are used to snapping to attention when talking to anyone
called<br>
"Doctor".</blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
Alan Rumsey, Senior Fellow<br>
Department of Anthropology<br>
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies<br>
Australian National University<br>
Canberra, ACT 0200<br>
Australia<br><br>
tel: (61)-(0)2-6125-2365<br>
fax: (61)-(0)2-6125-4896<br>
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