Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural and Social PerspectivesN. J. Enfield, Tanya Stivers How do we refer to people in everyday conversation? No matter the language or culture, we must choose from a range of options: full name ('Robert Smith'), reduced name ('Bob'), description ('tall guy'), kin term ('my son') etc. Our choices reflect how we know that person in context, and allow us to take a particular perspective on them. This book brings together a team of leading linguists, sociologists and anthropologists to show that there is more to person reference than meets the eye. Drawing on video-recorded, everyday interactions in nine languages, it examines the fascinating ways in which we exploit person reference for social and cultural purposes, and reveals the underlying principles of person reference across cultures from the Americas to Asia to the South Pacific. Combining rich ethnographic detail with cross-linguistic generalizations, it will be welcomed by researchers and graduate students interested in the relationship between language and culture. |
Contents
Section 1 | 23 |
Section 2 | 29 |
Section 3 | 48 |
Section 4 | 50 |
Section 5 | 73 |
Section 6 | 97 |
Section 7 | 100 |
Section 8 | 123 |
Section 9 | 149 |
Section 10 | 172 |
Section 11 | 203 |
Section 12 | 226 |
Section 13 | 251 |
Section 14 | 255 |
Section 15 | 281 |
Section 16 | 309 |
Other editions - View all
Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural and Social Perspectives N. J. Enfield,Tanya Stivers No preview available - 2007 |
Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural and Social Perspectives N. J. Enfield,Tanya Stivers No preview available - 2012 |
Common terms and phrases
achieve recognition addressee alternative recognitional Bequia betelnuts brother buva caller chapter claim clan compadrazgo compadre context conversation conveys cultural deceased default DEIC deictic demonstrative Emmanuel Enfield English Example father formulation Hello husband i-based quasi-pronouns indexical individual initial person reference initial reference initiates repair interaction interlocutors Keyeba Kilivila kin relation kin terms kinship terms Kitana Korean ku-based language Lazy Domingo Levinson Losuia marked markedness Minimal Description Moagava Mokeimwena name taboo nicknames non-minimal Oxkutzcab pointing gesture possible pragmatically preference for minimization prefix principles pronouns proper names propositus recipient design recognitional reference recognize reference form reference to persons referential referring expression relationship relative Rossel Rossel Island Roxanne Sacks and Schegloff Schegloff 1979 Schegloff 1996a semantic sequence Shana siblings sister social speaker specific Stivers taboo talk third-person reference Trobriand Islanders trouble source turn Tzeltal Tzotzil unmarked upgrades volume Yeah Yélî Dnye zero Zinacantán Zinacantec
Popular passages
Page 5 - But the uniqueness and immense pragmatic convenience of proper names in our language lies precisely in the fact that they enable us to refer publicly to objects without being forced to raise issues and come to an agreement as to which descriptive characteristics exactly constitute the identity of the object.
Page 5 - To put the same point differently, suppose we ask, "Why do we have proper names at all?" Obviously, to refer to individuals. "Yes, but descriptions could do that for us." But only at the cost of specifying identity conditions every time reference is made: suppose we agree to drop "Aristotle...