Ingroup versus outgroup pronouns

[So Haleza Grise]

What is the literal translation of господин? Google's translator also tells me it is Mr, but I remember in college, a Russian professor told us it meant gentleman or some such thing. I don't remember exactly how she translated it, but it was something like that, some formal-sounding term which wasn't 'Mr.' and was used with foreigners in contexts where English would say Mr. This was in the context of a literature class rather than a language class, and also it was several years ago, so it's possible she was either simplifying it or something, or that I am not remembering correctly.

It comes from господ, which I understand is "the Lord" in Church liturgy, so I would guess it could also be translated 'master' although I'm not sure that's right for contemporary Russian.

[clawgrip]

With a binary system like you describe, I see two potential strategies for social interaction: friendly/inclusive levelling, and deferential/exclusive ranking.

The first strategy, normal in English-speaking cultures, seeks to eliminate or minimize social hierarchy whenever possible, by including as many people in your in group, and adding them as quickly as possible. This is characterized by friendly language that emphasizes solidarity.

The second strategy, common in Asian cultures, seeks to uphold and emphasize social hierarchy by drawing attention to the differing group memberships. This is characterized by deferential language that emphasizes respectfulness.

Not to say that languages rely on one or the other exclusively; both are important parts of all languages, but one or the other I imagine will tend to be more dominant or overt.

Based on your description showing that known has neutral or positive connotations, while unknown has neutral or negative connotations, it seems clear that these classes operate on thefirst strategy.

Well, that's certaintly an interesting description of the system... When you say it operates on the first strategy, you mean only primarily, not *only*?

It really depends. You said that the unknown class can mark distance and enemies. Marking distance is a normal deferential strategy, e.g. implying that you are lower and they are higher in social ranking. But if it implies animosity, then it's not possible as a marker of politeness, I would think.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

With a binary system like you describe, I see two potential strategies for social interaction: friendly/inclusive levelling, and deferential/exclusive ranking.

The first strategy, normal in English-speaking cultures, seeks to eliminate or minimize social hierarchy whenever possible, by including as many people in your in group, and adding them as quickly as possible. This is characterized by friendly language that emphasizes solidarity.

The second strategy, common in Asian cultures, seeks to uphold and emphasize social hierarchy by drawing attention to the differing group memberships. This is characterized by deferential language that emphasizes respectfulness.

Not to say that languages rely on one or the other exclusively; both are important parts of all languages, but one or the other I imagine will tend to be more dominant or overt.

Based on your description showing that known has neutral or positive connotations, while unknown has neutral or negative connotations, it seems clear that these classes operate on the first strategy.

Well, that's certaintly an interesting description of the system... When you say it operates on the first strategy, you mean only primarily, not *only*?

It really depends. You said that the unknown class can mark distance and enemies. Marking distance is a normal deferential strategy, e.g. implying that you are lower and they are higher in social ranking. But if it implies animosity, then it's not possible as a marker of politeness, I would think.

Well, a rival would be considered under the known class, sort of like a "competitive friendship"...

[clawgrip]

Well then it's really up to you how you want to use those classes. As I said, you could use them either way.

[Cedh]

My work-in-progress conlang Proto-Mbingmik does something like this ("familiar" vs. "non-familiar" distinction for all human non-speakers), but I'm not aware of any specific natlang precedent. When I came up with this system, I was simply thinking along the lines of "how could I replace a basic T-V politeness distinction with something similar but more interesting?"

Ha, didn't know you had something like this too. Cool!

FWIW, the distinction in Proto-Mbingmik is meant to have nothing to do with politeness, social rank, or even friendship/rivalry on a basic level, but is primarily concerned with ethnicity (on a large scale) or residence in a particular village (on a small scale). Everyone who is considered part of the same community as the speaker is referred to with familiar pronouns, and every foreigner is referred to with non-familiar pronouns. Of course, this system can also be used with social implications, for instance when a newcomer gets accepted as a full member of a community (switch from non-familiar to familiar) or when someone gets banned from his/her home community as a punishment for crime (switch from familiar to non-familiar). I guess in some situations it might be context-dependent too, e.g a group of teenagers might use non-familiar pronouns for their parents or for other teenagers in order to distance themselves from them. However, that kind of usage would be frowned upon by most adults.

[Imralu]

I had an interesting discussion with a Thai student of mine once. She said, in Thai, she uses the polite, formal pronouns with her parents to show them respect. I told her that, in German, this would be very strange*. She was surprised and asked me if German people don't respect their parents. As far as I understand it, using Sie with your parents would actually be very impolite, placing so much 'respectful' distance between you and them that they are essentially strangers. It's a way of verbally disowning them. I told her that the way you can do that in English would be to call your parents by their first name instead of Mum/Mom and Dad, as Bart Simpson does to Homer and as my younger brother does to our father. European formality in T-V distinctions is, as far as I can see, not about respect but about distance.

*I'm assuming from my knowledge of German, but I haven't grown up speaking German and I've never spoken it with my parents so please, no one take this as gospel.

FWIW, the distinction in Proto-Mbingmik is meant to have nothing to do with politeness, social rank, or even friendship/rivalry on a basic level, but is primarily concerned with ethnicity (on a large scale) or residence in a particular village (on a small scale). Everyone who is considered part of the same community as the speaker is referred to with familiar pronouns, and every foreigner is referred to with non-familiar pronouns. Of course, this system can also be used with social implications, for instance when a newcomer gets accepted as a full member of a community (switch from non-familiar to familiar) or when someone gets banned from his/her home community as a punishment for crime (switch from familiar to non-familiar).

Ah, that's cool too. I thought about something like that but it doesn't make sense for the Ngolu because they don't have contact with any other ethnic group (with a few individual exceptions in recent times) and have thus completely lacked the idea of "foreigner" until now. (People of earth look so unusual to them that they call us taia, which originally meant something like ghost, spirit, demon. Earth is called utaia, 'ghost world'.) With my earlier conlang, Ahu, non Ahu were always referred to in the animate gender whereas adult Ahu were referred to in the masculine or feminine genders.

I guess in some situations it might be context-dependent too, e.g a group of teenagers might use non-familiar pronouns for their parents or for other teenagers in order to distance themselves from them. However, that kind of usage would be frowned upon by most adults.

... which is only going to ensure that it continues to be used to talk about them, I'm sure. With the change of generations, the way the system is used is certain to change.

[sirdanilot]

^In the western european languages I think you see a general shift of politeness to 'distance' pronouns. French vous, Dutch u, German Sie... I think this reflects a cultural shift in western europe, one where hierarchy/respect is less important and connections/relations/'network' becomes more important.

In Flemish, many people have a three-way distinction in the second person singular pronoun: 'U', 'je/jij' and 'ge/gij'. Although I grew up very close to Belgium I never completely figured out which is used when. 'ge' seems to be used more for informal and intimate settings. 'je' seems to be used in more formal and more distant settings. I cannot work out when people use 'u'. As a child, people at the hospital (we went to the hospital in Belgium as it was closer than the one in Holland) would say 'u' to me, which I found very strange. Perhaps people just use the pronouns randomly, haha.

I think this system arose because 'je' was introduced from standard Dutch into the flemish dialects that originally had only 'ge' and 'u'. But I am not sure.
Other Dutch dialects/minority languages, such as Limburgish, have the German-like 'de/du' pronouns and I don't think they have a polite version, but I do not speak these languages so I am not sure (they are hardly intelligible, so I think language is more appropriate than dialect).

[R.Rusanov]

[racist trolling deleted by mod]

[GreenBowTie]

did you seriously just fucking make that post

[clawgrip]

This thread has been enjoyable, so I will just choose to ignore his verbal diarrhoea.

[hwhatting]

What is the literal translation of господин? Google's translator also tells me it is Mr, but I remember in college, a Russian professor told us it meant gentleman or some such thing. I don't remember exactly how she translated it, but it was something like that, some formal-sounding term which wasn't 'Mr.' and was used with foreigners in contexts where English would say Mr. This was in the context of a literature class rather than a language class, and also it was several years ago, so it's possible she was either simplifying it or something, or that I am not remembering correctly.

It comes from господ, which I understand is "the Lord" in Church liturgy, so I would guess it could also be translated 'master' although I'm not sure that's right for contemporary Russian.

Yes, the original meaning is "master. lord". That is, of course, also the original meaning of "mister", but the meaning of the Russian word hasn't bleached as much as the meaning of the English word, so it's seen as too deferential to be used as an address, especially with non-foreigners.

I told her that, in German, this would be very strange*. She was surprised and asked me if German people don't respect their parents. As far as I understand it, using Sie with your parents would actually be very impolite, placing so much 'respectful' distance between you and them that they are essentially strangers. It's a way of verbally disowning them.*I'm assuming from my knowledge of German, but I haven't grown up speaking German and I've never spoken it with my parents so please, no one take this as gospel.

Yes, you're right, using "Sie" with your parents would be construed as distancing yourself from them. This was not always so; as sirdanilot writes about the situation in Dutch, it used to be usual in German to use the polite pronouns with one's parents. In my family, that was the case with my grandfather (born 1907), who still addressed his parents that way in his childhood. The switch to using the familiar pronoun seems to have happened between WWI and the 50s.

[Salmoneus]

Possibly related: coincidentally, someone on my goodreads feed just mentioned something interesting from a (nonfiction) book they were reading: in it, someone in a letter very apologetically, very daringly, suggests that he will use the first name of the woman he is writing to, in the American fashion. The pair had been close friends for 13 years at this point, but calling her by her name (rather than calling her Mrs so-and-so) in a private correspondance nobody else would see still appeared racy and potentially offensive to him. This was in 1948.

It's English rather than German/Dutch, and titles rather than pronouns, but I think it's part of the same cultural shift. Most of it happened immediately after WWII, I think. I'd suggest a combination of deformalisation in general with a specific massive dose of Americanisation, in an era when Europe was politically, economically, culturally and in some places militarily controlled by America. [It's not just that, though, since America also went through changes in this era]

[clawgrip]

So this thread helped me focus some ideas I was already thinking about. I made some charts. Please help me improve/correct/add to these. If you think I'm wrong, if I'm missing some stuff, please let me know!

[Salmoneus]

I don't think you're right regarding English.

But a huge issue here is that when it comes to politeness, there is no 'English'. Standards of politeness vary massively with dialect, both geographical and (at least in the UK, probably elsewhere too) sociological. I would, even among friends, say things like "do you think you could possibly pass the salt perhaps?", but this would probably have been seen as a bit too forward by my mother, would tends to say things like "I don't know whether you might like to pass the salt", and we would both be seen as horribly rude by people who would instead happily say "giz the salt". Differences in politeness standards are a huge part of why people from lower socioeconomic groups in the UK struggle to get good jobs, and why people from upper socioeconomic groups often struggle to talk to people from lower socioeconomic groups without appearing like patronising and/or effeminate arseholes who could do with a punch in the face. It's also part of why Americans are often unpopular in the UK.

Anyway, for me I don't think that 'status' and 'in/out' are really the way to explain my standards of politeness. Instead, what matters is primarily the nature of the relationship, rather than objective status (and 'status' is a confused mixture, for me, of wealth, institutional power, and class - I'd probably be more polite to an academic who didn't have much money than i would to a jumped-up barrowboy millionaire - not just for moral reasons, but because the rich guy lacks class, and hence status). I don't think it really makes sense to talk about people with high status who are part of my in-group - if they're in my in-group, then we're equals. This, though, varies with dialect. Americans, for instance, at least preserved the idea of high-status family members, for example, much longer than we did - in american novels, sometimes kids call their fathers "sir"!


Some of your markers:
- 'sir' and 'madam' can be found in much lower-deference situations than 'your honour'. The latter is associate only with ultra-deferential situations, and likewise most other honorifics ('your excellency', etc). In thos situations even INDIRECT requests are strongly frowned upon. 'Sir' and 'madam' (or 'miss'), however, are traditionally found between pupils and teachers, retailers and customers, and employees and employers. In this register, small amounts of informal language are allowed, as are indirect requests when appropriate. This register is much less common now, but is still found in more traditional parts of society, and even ouside of it is still sometimes gone into as a defence mechanism when someone seems to be demanding it.
- not sure what you mean by 'avoidance of given names without title within family'.
- in formal contexts, requests are usually indirect ('could you please', 'would you mind', 'do you think you could', etc).
- there is a distinct 'superior-to-inferior' politeness level, where the speaker is allowed to use given names and maybe to issue (polite) imperatives in some cases. So Bob Smith expects his manager to call him 'Bob' and if he called him 'Mr Smith' he'd probably be worried the man was angry with him, or mocking. But he calls his manager 'Mr Jones', at least until he feels they are members of the same group, and if the manager insists on being 'Dave' before ingroup status has been achieved he may be mocked for it behind his back. [Eg our current prime minister was at one point widely mocked as 'Call me Dave']
- there is another distinct 'superior-to-inferior' where you actually get to order people around. This is very restricted, however (the inverse of the 'your honour' level)

I think at least in the UK the big distinction is ingroup vs outgroup, rather than status. My impression is that Americans are further to the status-centric side. So when Americans call their waiter 'Dave', they're trying to say "don't worry, I'm not your boss!", but are interpreted as saying "I've just decreed that I'm one of your friends now!"

Just some thoughts off the top of my head.

[clawgrip]

This is probably a North America-centric view of English then. A UK perspective is interesting to see.

- not sure what you mean by 'avoidance of given names without title within family'.

What I meant here was, for example, "Uncle Frank" is acceptable but "Frank" is not.

[clawgrip]

I eventually want to use a version of this table to help me work out some of the pragmatics in my own conlang, so I'm trying to work out some things from real languages.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

Regarding that table above, I'm contemplating a two-tier socio(linguistic) hierarchy:
1)Ruler and 2)Everyone else.

A possible third tier is deceased rulers and ancestor spirits (those who choose to watch over and guard their descendants, rather than staying dead)

[Zaarin]

ancestor spirits (those who choose to watch over and guard their descendants, rather than staying dead)

I've been thinking of implementing something similar in one of my own conworlds, inspired by Morrowind.