Terms of address as keys to culture and society: German "Herr" vs. Polish "Pan"

• Authors: Wierzbicka Anna
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article takes up a theme addressed many years ago by Andrzej Bogusławski: a semantic and cultural comparison of the Polish and German terms of address “Pan” and “Herr.” Focussing on these two words, the paper seeks to demonstrate (as in a number of earlier studies, e.g. Wierzbicka 2015, Forthcoming) that despite their apparent insignificance, generic titles used daily across Europe can reveal complex and intricate webs of cultural assumptions and attitudes and provide keys to the inmost recesses of the speakers’ cultural and social world. At the same time, the paper argues that in order to use these keys effectively, we need some basic locksmith skills and it tries to show that the NSM approach to semantics and pragmatics can help us develop such skills. The explications posited here possess, it is argued, predictive and explanatory power which is beyond the reach of traditional analyses operating with technical labels such as “formal,” ”polite,” “respectful,” “egalitarian” and so on. The paper has implications for language teaching and cross-cultural communication and education in Europe and beyond.

Keywords

EN

terms of address; Polish words “pan” and “pani” German words “Herr” and “Frau” Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM); cultural values; cross-linguistic pragmatics; cross-linguistic semantics

• Publisher: Wydział Neofilologii, Uniwersytet Warszawski
• Journal: Acta Philologica
• Year: 2016
• Issue: 49
• Pages: 29-44

Contributors

author

Wierzbicka Anna

• Australian National University

References

• Bogusławski, A. (1985). De l’adresse, avec référence particulière au polonais. Revue des études slaves, 57(3), 469–481.
• Böll, H. (1961). Billard um halbzehn. 5. Aufl . Köln: Kiepenheuer and Witsch.
• Böll, H. (1976). Billiards at half past nine (P. Bowles, trans.). London: Calder and Boyars.
• Collins German Dictionary (1980). Glasgow: Collins.
• Farese, G.M. (2015). Generic titles as forms of address in Italian: their meaning unpacked through NSM. Paper presented at the INAR 3 International Conference, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA. October 9 and 10, 2015.
• Goddard, C. (Ed.). (2008). Cross-linguistic semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Goddard, C. (2010). Semantic molecules and semantic complexity (with special reference to “environmental” molecules). Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 8(1), 123–155.
• Goddard, C. (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Goddard, C., and Wierzbicka A. (Eds.). (2002). Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings (Vols. 1–2). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Goddard, C., and Wierzbicka, A. (2014a). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Goddard, C., and Wierzbicka, A. (2014b). Semantic fieldwork and lexical universals. Studies in Language, 38(1), 80–127.
• Huszcza, R. (2005). Politeness in Poland: From ‘titlemania’ to grammaticalised honorifics.
• L. Hickey (Ed.), Politeness in Europe (218–233). Clevedon; Buffalo: Multilingual Matters.
• Klemperer, V. (2002). Th e language of the Third Reich LTI, Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s notebook (M. Brady, trans.). London; New York: Continuum.
• Langenscheidt’s Groswörterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache (1997). Berlin: Langenscheidt.
• Langenscheidt’s Standard German English Dictionary (1983). Berlin: Langenscheidt.
• Peeters, B. (Ed.). (2006). Semantic primes and universal grammar: Empirical evidence from the Romance languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Schwanitz, D. (1995). Der Campus. Frankfurt a/M: Eichborn.
• Wierzbicka, A. (1992). Semantics, Culture and Cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics: Primes and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Wierzbicka, A. (1998). German cultural scripts: public signs as a key to social attitudes and cultural values. Discourse and Society, 9(2), 241–282.
• Wierzbicka, A. (2014a). Imprisoned in English: The hazards of English as a default language. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Wierzbicka, A. (2014b). Can there be common knowledge without a common language? German ‘Pflicht’ vs English ‘duty.’ Common Knowledge, 21(1), 141–171.
• Wierzbicka, A. (2015). A whole cloud of culture condensed into a drop of semantics: The meaning of the German word Herr as a term of address. International Journal of Language and Culture, 2(1), 1–37.
• Wierzbicka, A. (in press a). Terms of address in European languages: A study in crosslinguistic semantics and pragmatics. In K. Allan, A. Capone, I. Kecskes, J.L. Mey (eds.), Pragmemes and theories of language use. Springer.
• Wierzbicka, A. (Intercultural Pragmatics). Making sense of terms of address in European languages through NSM.