Addressing people properly

How is the social relationship established, maintained and supported through the use of language?

Introduction

The influence of culture on the structure of a language spoken by its people is undeniable however not always easy to see. Therefore, some language phenomena can be explained from the cultural perspective and in turn, those phenomena can be useful for inference to understand more about the culture. Among numerous interesting connections with the values of Vietnamese people, pronouns in Vietnamese language (Kinh language) draw a lot of linguists’ attention. In Vietnamese language there is no neutral personal pronoun (Hao, 2001). All pronouns impose and help maintaining the relationship among participants in conversation, in terms of social status, hierarchy, respect and politeness. In the scope of this paper, the relationship between kinship terms and such kind of relationship will be presented.

Kinship terms as the most popular one in use

Even though there is still a controversial question of terminology among linguists, most of them agree on the existence of 5 ways for addressing and self-reference in Vietnamese: (1) true personal pronouns – “đại từ xưng hô chính danh” as called in Vietnamese by Hao (2001), e.g. tao, mày, họ, (2) proper name, e.g. Lan, Cuong, (3) kinship term, e.g. bố, mẹ, con, anh, em, (4) academic degree and occupational words (e.g. giáo sư, bác sỹ), (5) demonstrative words (e.g. kẻ hèn mọn này). While kinship terms can establish the intimacy similar to that of family relationship, the basic personal pronouns tôi, tao, tớ, ta, chúng tôi, chúng tao, mày, mi, ngươi, chúng mày, bay, chúng bay, chúng mi, nó, hắn, chúng nó, etc. are not only unable to perform the same function but also perceived as not polite and courteous, sometimes even disrespectful. Even họ, which could be considered as almost neutral to refer to the third person, is still not suitable for reference to parents or other family members at higher hierarchy, i.e. it is not widely accepted when a person talk about his/her parents as in “Họ (bố mẹ anh) thích em.” Moreover, in a typical communicative context among Vietnamese people, kinship terms could function as a way to reveal emotions and attitudes because they automatically encode the kinship relation (Mike, 2011). Therefore, among those different options, kinship terms are the most popular ones to be used in communication.

Kinship terms definition

Kinship terms are defined as words used to refer to people who are members of the same family. Following is the most common kinship terms in use:

The grammaticalization of kinship terms

Vietnamese kinship terms, as originally revealing the hierarchy among people in a family, are grammaticalized in order to perform pronominal function. The grammaticalization process is not exclusive for personal pronoun but in fact, happens to almost every category. For example, directional nouns such as “trên”, “dưới” are grammaticalized into locative preposition, or moving verbs such as “lên”, “xuống”, “vào”, “ra”, “đi”, “về” are grammaticalized into target/goal preposition. Similarly, pronoun grammaticalization does not completely change the meaning of the kinship terms but rather adds the metaphorical meaning in the basic literal meaning. The mechanism of the transformation is mostly based on age. If a participant of a conversation is as old as the counterpart’s grandfather, he will be addressed as “ông.” For example, in the following conversation between a little girl (5 years old) and a man (50 years old), kinship terms that resemble the relationship among granddaughter and grandfather are used:

The use of kinship terms as the manifestation of Vietnam culture

The new shade of meaning is to suggest the formation of a “similar” kinship relation among people participating in the communication. It in fact is in line with a prominent feature of collective culture of Vietnam that Vietnamese people consider each other as people with kinship relation. That feature is manifested in numerous folk legends of Vietnam, such as “Offspring of Dragon and Fairy”. Dragon (Lac Long Quan) and Fairy Bird (Au Co) together fought various evils to gain peace for the land. They married and gave birth to 100 eggs which hatched into 50 girls and 50 boys. Their children then settled down throughout the regions to build and protect the country. In short, all Vietnamese people are believed to be originally from the same family. The legend and the way of addressing and self-reflection using kinship terms could be considered as an attribute of Vietnamese people’s beliefs.

One interesting phenomena in the use of kinship terms in Vietnamese is that foreigners mentioned in the conversation, either as the third person or the first and second in translation, are often regarded as “nó”, “tao”, “mày” respectively. Even though those true personal pronouns are considered impolite when using among Vietnamese people, they are applied for foreigners without implying impoliteness. It seems that foreigners are exclusive with those principles of ranking and politeness because they are thought to be outsiders and not responsible for practicing as well as following the culture.

Change in kinship terms use over time

Kinship terms used as pronoun evolved just as any other aspects of language. In Hao’s report at Conference of Problems of Vietnam Culture (Hội nghị về Các vấn đề Văn hóa Việt Nam) in Ho Chi Minh City (2000), “dâu”, “rể”, “vợ”, “chồng” are not used as personal pronouns, i.e. “Chồng ơi, vợ muốn đi ăn” (Hey husband (you), wife (I) want to eat out) is not a normal utterance by the time this report presented in One reason suggested by Nguyen Duc Duong, as noted by Hao (2000) is that “dâu”, “rể”, “vợ”, “chồng” are not considered as included in blood relation but rather due to marriage. That explanation is not very persuasive since kinship terms “thím”, “dượng” yet were commonly used regardless of their exclusion from blood relation. Interestingly, nowadays, such challenging question does not seem to matter any longer because the use of “vợ”, “chồng”, “dâu”, “rể” as pronouns are completely normal and common. It can be seen that regarding a form of language use as a complete body that perfectly reflects the surroundings rather than living body which is improving and interacting with the surroundings every day would unnecessarily cause a lot of problems.

Pros and cons of kinship terms used as personal pronouns

Since kinship terms with its power to establish and maintain the social relation between the speakers and their interlocutors, differences in age, and even the attitude of the speakers toward those people, a slight change in the choice of kinship terms can help express a lot of the change in emotion and attitude. For example, a famous line, also the name of the short film, is “Chị ơi, anh thích em” can be enough for the audience to predict that it is about a boy falling in love with an older girl. “Anh – em”, as commonly used between man and woman respectively in romantic relationship and marriage, is used to propose. Therefore, it marks a change in position of the two people in the relationship, to replace the old one established by age (also reflected in “chị ơi”). Similarly, when “anh – em” is changed to “tôi – cô”, if not for joking, it usually reveals that the relationship is going wrong (Hao, 2000). While the kinship terms play an important role in establishing social relation and expressing attitude, they possess as much negative effect on communication between people: bring strangers closer to each other with ease but also create a superficial family atmosphere and promote the obsequiousness and imperiousness (Hao, 2000). Since there are no neutral terms as “I” and “you” in English, the use of kinship terms can either consciously or subconsciously imposes the rank on the participants and violate democracy, especially in work place. It is true for a bilingual like me. When I speak English, I express myself more freely but when I speak Vietnamese on the same topic, if the listener happens to be the one in higher position (either older or in higher rank in my family), I find myself argue far less and give up my point a lot easier. 

Conclusion

In short, Vietnamese kinship terms when used as pronouns can carry not only pronominal function but also pragmatic function. Besides the intimacy and closeness they bring about to establish the social relation among people, kinship terms are also detrimental in the context in which fairness is priority regardless of age.

Reference

Hao, X. C. (2000), Report at Conference of Problems of Vietnam Culture

Hao, X. C. (2001). Tiếng Việt, văn Việt, người Việt. Nhà xuất bản Trẻ.

Mike, P. (2011), Are Vietnamese kinship terms pronouns?