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Interesting point Laura. <br><br>
Also, re your earlier point about the different entailments T+LN usage
for women vs men, I have noted that the availability of the 'Dr' /
'Professor' + LN option for woman fills a real gap (here in Australia
anyway, where "Ms" is hardly ever used) in that it can be used
by married woman who retain their maiden name without implying either
that the LN is their husband's or that they are unmarried. <br><br>
Incidentally, Australia in general, including at universities, is, at
least in terms of address, like the MIT electronics lab, the reciprocal
'FN club <i>par excellence'</i> . But in non-addressed reference,
e.g., for listing faculty members in university documents, etc.,
those with doctorates are always referred to as Dr.+FN+LN rather than
'Mr/Mrs./Miss' because here this is treated as an equipollent opposition
rather than a privative one. In other words, the use of 'Mr/Mrs./Miss
implies that the person does not have a PhD. (or MD). And similarly with
'Professor' vs Dr./Mr/Mrs/Miss (professorships here being being
much rarer than in the US).<br><br>
Alan Rumsey<br><br>
At 11:18 AM 7/24/2003 -0500, Laura Miller wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>This discussion about address terms
is very interesting, particularly the way it reflects so many different
local practices, individual backgrounds and idiosyncratic preferences,
such as Hal's aversion to LN. In my undergraduate classes at Loyola I got
into the habit of addressing students by LN plus the Japanese address
term -san, which is inclusive of Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms (LN + T). I started
doing this not because it so nicely avoids labeling women by age or
marital status, but because I find it much easier to remember them by
their family names, which are incredibly diverse, rather than their first
names, which are not (so many Kimberlys, Jessicas and Amandas!).<br>
<br>
I was chastised by a sociology colleague for doing this, because she
claimed that by using their last names I am imposing a degree of social
distance and not demonstrating intimacy. But the students like it. I've
overheard them use it to refer to others outside class ("Do you know
what Patel-san did?), and they think it's sort of exotic and cool. <br>
Best,<br>
Laura<br><br>
>>> "Harold F. Schiffman"
<haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn.edu> 07/24/03 08:52 AM >>><br>
Alan,<br><br>
The way you ended your last message, with last-name only (which I
was<br>
tempted to start this message with, but can't bring myself to do)
reminded<br>
me of British and other traditions, where LN only was (or is) de
rigueur.<br>
I could never get used to this, because in the US, at least, it is
used<br>
almost exclusively in the military, in other para-military
organizations<br>
(e.g. the US Post office) and of course, reciprocally by
(male)<br>
co-equals, but especially in sports. (One of my female students,
also an<br>
athlete here at Penn, told me that women "jocks" do this as
well.) Since<br>
I had worked in the Post office for 2 summers and 2 Xmases and came
to<br>
loathe LN address (never reciprocal) from supervisers, I can't bear
it<br>
when I hear it from British academics, or others. (I once had a
Tamil TA<br>
whose husband was on the faculty, so she assumed she should address
me<br>
with LN; I couldn't bring myself to tell her it was inappropriate in
the<br>
US, since it would then bring forth endless apologies and groveling, so
I<br>
had to ask the students to break it to her gently). Her response
(to<br>
them) was that it was British usage, which she assumed, and continued
to<br>
assume, was appropriate in the US.<br><br>
Hal Schiffman<br><br>
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Alan Rumsey wrote:<br><br>
> At 07:53 AM 7/23/2003 -0700, Alexandra Jaffe wrote:<br>
> ><br>
> >At the same time as reciprocal TLN may have been indexing
shared<br>
> >membership in a community of high-powered scholars (downplaying
internal<br>
> >status hierarchy) it surely also served to differentiate that
community<br>
> >from other academic communities that used the (normative) Dr.
or<br>
> >Professor. The choice of less hierarchy-laden terms acted as a
powerful<br>
> >assertion of high status in the broader field of American
Universities<br>
> >precisely by downplaying the need for display of power.<br>
><br>
> Perhaps so, but from the feedback I have received on my posting it
is clear<br>
> that there is a lot of diversity in this respect among US campuses,
and<br>
> perhaps even among fields and departments in them. Nor do all of
the<br>
> 'elite' ones have reciprocal T+LN as the norm. One of my informants
says of<br>
> Harvard in the sixties that:<br>
> those in the rank of "Instructor" (post-Ph.D. but the
entry-level<br>
> appointment) were listed in the catalogue as well as addressed as
"Dr.<br>
> ...," thus making it an identifiable low-[man-]on-totem-pole
designation.<br>
> Then people were listed, described, and sometimes even addressed [!]
by<br>
> rank, "Assistant Professor So-and-So," "Associate
Professor So-and-So"<br>
> [then a tenured position, by the way], and "Professor
So-and-So" [now the<br>
> only tenured rank, instructor being now a pre-Ph.D. rank as
elsewhere]. It<br>
> was refreshing to learn, on a scholarly visit when an undergraduate,
that<br>
> Yale called everyone "Mr."<br>
><br>
> Meanwhile, down the road: "MIT's Research Laboratory of
Electronics in the<br>
> old WWII wooden buildings [where Chomsky was based] was indeed the
FN club<br>
> par excellence", bearing out my surmise that this is where the
reciprocal<br>
> FN usage came to Chicago Linguistics from.<br>
><br>
> Another informant reports that at Antioch College in the early
sixties,<br>
> faculty were addressed as Mr. and Mrs., rather than
"Doctor" or Professor,<br>
> but this usage was not reciprocally used by faculty when
addressing<br>
> students, for which first names were used instead.<br>
><br>
> And another ex-Chicago grad student reminds me that of course,
reciprocal<br>
> TLN was not used (with a straight face anyway) by students when
talking to<br>
> each other, but only between faculty and students, thereby
distinguishing<br>
> that as a special kind of interaction.<br>
><br>
> All of this once again bears out Ervin-Tripp's point (in the paper
referred<br>
> to by Mr. Schiffman) that<br>
> that the range of pragmatic entailments that develop around
such<br>
> alternations can be a lot more complex and highly ramified (and, I
would<br>
> add, a lot more locally specific) than you might expect, given the
small<br>
> number of contrasting terms involved.<br>
><br>
> Rumsey (ah, but that's another one again)<br>
><br>
><br>
></blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
Alan Rumsey <br>
Senior Fellow, Dept. of Anthropology <br>
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies <br>
Australian National University <br>
Canberra, ACT 0200 <br>
Australia<br>
tel: +61-2-6125-2365 Fax: +61-2-6125-4896 <br>
alr@coombs.anu.edu.au <br>
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