Brother Bell’s Audience Design

1. Brother Bell’s Audience Design Forms of Address among Latter-day Saints 39th Penn Linguistics Conference University of Pennsylvania March 21, 2015

2. Introduction • English Forms of Address • First Name (FN) or Title + Last Name (TLN) • Only exists in communities where potentially everyone has a title • Teachers, military, doctors, politicians, police, etc. • Generally on the decline everywhere else in US (Murray 2002) • Goal: Show what factors affect forms of address in Latter-day Saint (LDS) communities • Outline: Literature review, methodology, results, conclusion, future work Introduction

3. Literature Review • Power, solidarity, intimacy, status, and age determine address forms (Brown & Gilman 1960, Brown & Ford 1961, Slobinet al 1968 ) • Female professors received more FN. Female students used more FN with professors. (Rubin 1981; Takiff, Sanchez & Stewart 2001) • Different talking to or talking about people (Dickey 1997) • Lots of messy things with newlyweds and in-laws (Jorgenson 1994) • Most of the research is on non-reciprocal relationships • One person receives TLN, the other receives FN Introduction

4. Between Equals?(Brown & Ford 1961) • Reciprocal TLN • People with potentially equal status, but who don’t know each other well • Reciprocal FN • Between friends, colleagues, etc. • Transition Phase • “…as small sometimes as 5 minutes of conversation … [so] it is not easy to make out its exact character.” (1961:377) Introduction

5. Why Latter-day Saints?* • Cultural norms • Brother or Sister + last name. • Strong and active, but largely below the radar • Congregations • Strict delineated boundaries (like a public school system) • Interaction with anyone from strangers to close friends on a weekly basis • Address forms go from mutual TLN to mutual FN over the course of months or years • Fogg (1990) studied address forms among Mormons • No metadata • Formality was strongest predictor * Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. Mormons) Introduction

6. Target Population • 21 young, married couples from the Athens 1st Ward • White, heterosexual • Ages 20–36 (mean = 28) • From high school education to Ph.D. • Roughly half are from Georgia • At least 10 years in the church, though most were raised Mormon. • About 1/3 of the congregation • Young people are in a transition phase into adulthood • No singles were included • Not enough for a representative sample • Most attend another congregation for single members Methodology

7. Survey • 42 names down the side, 4 situations across the top • Asks how well participant knows the person • 31 participants returned the survey • 5147 forms of address, 1270 relationship data points • Excluded lesser common forms (Brother John, John Smith, Brother John Smith, Smith, etc.) 26 O O O O O O * Names have (obviously) been changed. Methodology

8. Audience DesignBell (1984) Speaker Addressee Auditor Overhearer • 4 situations based on Audience • Speakers design their style based on who they are talking to. • Audience Design proposes that they also vary in who else is listening. • Implicational hierarchy: variation with one Audience Type presupposes variation with Types closer to the speaker. Eavesdropper Adapted from Bell (1984:159) Methodology

9. The Four Situations (Exact descriptions of each refer to a lot of Mormon culture that would be tangential for the purposes of this presentation.) • The situations put the other person in each of the four Audience Types • Situation 1 (Addressee): Direct address • Situation 2 (Auditor): Small, informal committee meeting • Situation 3 (Overhearer): Talking to spouse about them at church • Situation 4 (Eavesdropper): Talking to spouse about them while driving home • Situations 3 and 4 control for the addressee. Methodology

10. Independent Variables • Familiarity • Prediction: the closer the two, the more likely FN is used (Brown and Gilman 1960) • 4 Situations • Prediction: significant in some way (contrary to Fogg1990) • Familiarity between spouse and 3rd person • Prediction: accommodation to addressee (Dickey 1997) • Age difference • Prediction: smaller age difference = more FN (Brown and Ford 1961) • Sex • Prediction: women use more FN (Fogg 1990). • Parenthood • Prediction: parenthood is seen as a higher status Methodology

11. Results(rbrul) Results

12. Familiarity • Clearly the most significant factor • Extremes are not categorical • Level slope Results

13. Male/Female • Women use FN with other women more at all levels of familiarity. • Unexpected leveling off at the top Results

14. Situation • Situations 1, 3, 4 generally the same. • Situation 2 surprisingly showed less FN, even among close relation-ships. Results

15. Situation • Women use more FN towards addressees. • Men use less FN towards auditors. Results

16. Spouse-3rd Person Relationship • The better the spouse knows a person, the more likely they will use FN. Results

17. Parenthood • Parenthood was statistically significant in predicting FN. • Seen a higher “status.” Results

18. Conclusion • Familiarity is easily the strongest factor • However, it’s not categorical • People use FN more with others of the same sex, especially women. • Camaraderie among LDS women (Fogg 1990) • Men are influenced by the presence of an Auditor. • Possibly because of more leadership meetings • Parenthood is higher in “status” • Age is not a factor, contrary to other studies • Forms of address in reciprocal relationships are determined by different factors than those in non-reciprocal relationships Conclusion

19. Audience Design • Challenges the implicational hierarchy • If variation occurs with one Audience Type, it is expected to occur with Types closer to the speaker. • Yet, for men, Auditors are different while Addressees are not affected. Conclusion

20. Future Research • Future Research: • Parenthood > Married > Unmarried • Other auditor situations • More statistics • Acquisition • Social network analysis Future Research

21. References • Bell, Allan. 1984. Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13(02). 145–204. • Bell, Allan. 2013. The guidebook to sociolinguistics. John Wiley & Sons. • Brown, Roger & Marguerite Ford. 1961. Address in American English. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 62(2). 375. • Brown, Roger & Albert Gilman. 1960. The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T. A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language, 253–76. Cambridge: MIT Press. • Dickey, Eleanor. 1997. Forms of address and terms of reference. Journal of Linguistics 33(2). 255–274. • Jorgenson, Jane. 1994. Situated address and the social construction of “in‐law” relationships. Southern Communication Journal 59(3). 196–204. • Murray, Thomas E. 2002. A new look at address in American English: The rules have changed. Names 50(1). 43–61. • Rubin, Rebecca B. 1981. Ideal traits and terms of address for male and female college professors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 41(5). • Takiff, Hilary A., Diana T. Sanchez & Tracie L. Stewart. 2001. What’s in a name? The status implications of students’ terms of address for male and female professors. Psychology of Women Quarterly 25(2). 134–144.