On 11/18/2013 11:55 AM, Damien Hall wrote:
> Dear all
>
> I have a student on her (junior) year abroad, who is going to do a short Year Abroad research project on the use of _tu_ and _vous_ on Twitter, and whether it has changed the rules for T & V use among young people in France. Can anyone recommend good recent literature that she could / should read, please? I know the classic Brown & Gilman article (1960) which introduced the distinction, but beyond that this isn't really my area.
Excellent question! Before you (heh) get into questions of power
and solidarity, you need to look at genericity, because "tu" and "vous"
are used as generics like in English, but not with frequencies
proportional to their use as personal pronouns. Aidan Coveney's 2003
paper, "Anything you can do, tu can do better" is a good place to start:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9481.00218/abstract
Your student (or you) might want to contact Coveney or the
AFLS-News list, or at least Google Scholar, to see what the latest in
that field is. Also remember that changes in meaning and use proceed
through ambiguity, so there *will* be numerous examples that simply
cannot be classified, even by the people who produced them. Traugott's
1989 article should be required reading for anyone who's studying
semantic or pragmatic change:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/414841
I hope this helps, and I hope she finds some interesting data!
--
-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
Saint John's University
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