"Leader DeLay"??? What's up with that?

[James C Stalker]

Your student might also include "darlin'", depending on region.  A friend in
Louisville always addresses female waitrons/servers/etc. as "darlin'."
Deducing illocutionary force from conversations with him, "darlin'" ranges
across polite insistence on relative power to downright derision.  There is
a line from a country song, which I can't retrieve right now, something
like, "don't call me darlin' darlin', you don't even know my name."

Jim



Beverly Flanigan writes:

> At 10:17 PM 5/15/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>
>>>> LOL! I not only hear it, I say it! (I also say "Sir" - both of them
>>>> often
>>>> in the courtroom).
>>>
>>> I've been thinking about that. I always use "ma'am" with respect. And I
>>> often use "sir" with respect. But sometimes I use "sir" as a means of
>>> providing distance or separation.
>>
>> That's what "respecting negative face" is all about.
>>
>> There's also been nice (if dated) work on "ma'am" vs. "dear",
>> "honey", and other terms of endearment (between strangers in
>> commercial exchanges), most notably an old (1980) paper by Wolfson &
>> Manes, "Don't 'Dear' Me" (in S. McConnell-Ginet et al. (eds.), Women
>> and Language in Literature and Society, 79-92.  New York: Praeger),
>> which explores age, sex, and regional differences (New England vs.
>> Southern U.S.) in the choice of terms of address.  Don't know if
>> there's been any follow-up since.
>>
>> Larry
>
> I just put a grad student onto that article; he wants to see how people
> address restaurant and shop people.  As I recall, the article was
> particularly concerned with men "dearing" waitresses--oops, servers.
>



James C. Stalker
Department of English
Michigan State University