Mister, bro, or ada? Styles of Addressing among Multilingual Pakistani Students

Bibliographic Data

ID21185193
AuthorsMuhammad Arif Soomro (0000-0002-1503-5375), Tatiana V Larina (0000-0001-6167-455X), Tatiana Larina
Year2023
Volume23
Issue2
Pages241-257
Publication date2023-05-29
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGEMA Online Journal of Language Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1675-8021 • E-ISSN: 2550-2131
PublisherPenerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.17576/gema-2023-2302-13
OpenAlexW4378527437
LanguageEN
Citations received4

Address forms are an important component of communication with a wide range of socio-cultural \ndifferences across languages and cultures. In a multilingual context, their variety creates problems \nin comprehending their pragmatic meaning and appropriate usage. The study aims to define the \ncategories of address forms used by multilingual Pakistani students speaking in English in an \nacademic setting and to highlight the impact of socio-cultural context and identity on their choice \nin different situations. We have limited our study to the interaction between students in three social \ncontexts and explored addressing a peer (a classmate), a junior student, and a senior student. The \ndata were collected through a questionnaire with the participation of 252 students and were \nanalysed with a mixed-method approach both quantitative and qualitative. Our results show that \nPakistani students use a creative mixture of different categories of English and native address \nforms while speaking in English to express their values, attitudes, and identity. They demonstrate \na strong sensitivity to the asymmetrical relations and adherence to hierarchy among junior and \nsenior students resulting in variations of formality and informality. The findings illustrate the \nimpact of context, values, and identity as well as the native language on address forms and their \nfunctioning in a bi-multilingual context and contribute to sociolinguistics, pragmatics, variational \nlinguistics, bi-multilingualism, and cultural linguistics

Mathematics education · Computer Science · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology

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