Examining the addressivity of a text (along with its rhetoric, stylistics, semantics, pragmatics, discursive strategies, and other linguistic and literary aspects) may be a way of analyzing our responses to that text. We may ask such questions as: To whom is this text addressed? Is it addressed to us? Why is or isn't it addressed to us? How is it addressed to us? In what way does or doesn't it address other relevant texts?
To address may be to deal with, confront, or direct one's attention to such things as problems, needs, interests, or concerns. It may also be to greet someone, speak directly to someone, call someone by name, or mark directions for delivery on something (such as a postcard, letter, or package).
Various kinds of speech acts (such as greetings, thanks, promises, demands, requests, warnings, apologies, and congratulations) may be addressed to someone (although we may not always be sure who we're addressing). It may be difficult to say anything without addressing someone directly or indirectly. (Thus, as you read this, I'm addressing you as a reader, even though I may not know or have met you, and may not be able to address you personally.) However, expletives such as "Crap!" or "Damn!" may be an exception to the rule that speech acts must be addressed to someone (even if they're only addressed to oneself). Expletives may in fact not be addressed to anyone, and may often function merely to vent anger, annoyance, or frustration.
We constantly engage in modes of address in our social interactions, e.g. when we say Hello, Good Morning, Good Night, or Goodbye to someone, when we have a conversation with someone, when we make or answer a call on our cellphones, when we send a text or email, when we begin a letter with Hi, Hello, Dear, or To Whom It May Concern, and when we end an email with Sincerely, Love, Yours Truly, or Best Wishes.
We may also be (very much, only moderately, or not at all) aware of various norms of address, e.g. when we call someone Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr., Rev., Rabbi, Sir, Ma'am, Your Honor, Your Highness, Your Grace, Your Holiness, Mr. President, Mr. Mayor, Madam Speaker, Mrs. Ambassador, Governor, Senator, Representative, Professor, Daddy, Mommy, Grandpa, Grandma, and so on.
Norms of address may also determine the correct pronouns with which to address someone in accordance with their gender identity (he/him, she/her, they/their, ze/zir, etc.). The refusal to address someone by their preferred pronouns ("misgendering") may in some cases be primarily motivated by the addresser's refusal to conform to beliefs about gender identity that they don't accept, but in other cases it may also be motivated by their antagonism, hostility, or bigotry toward gender nonconforming people (although it may be a legally protected form of free speech3).
Attorney and legal scholar Chan Tov McNamarah (2021) says that
"misgendering is simply the latest link in a concatenation of disparaging modes of reference and address. From addressing Black persons by only their first names, to the intentional omission of women's professional titles, and to the deliberate butchering of the ethnically-marked names of minorities, these verbal slights have long been used to symbolize the subordination of societally disfavored groups."4
McNamarah also says that regulations prohibiting misgendering don't unconstitutionally restrict freedom of speech, because they narrowly target harassment in the workplace, and because the government has a compelling interest in protecting minorities from discrimination. Nor do they compel speech, because they don't force a speaker to express any particular message regarding gender identity.5
Perhaps even more significantly, McNamarah shows how dishonorifics (expressions of social inferiority) have been used to deprive addressees of social standing. Dishonorifics have included renaming or un-naming of enslaved persons, legal restrictions on titles and naming practices for women, anglicization or westernization of ethnic names, replacement of ethnically marked names with names such as "Samurai Jack," "Bruce Lee," or "Jackie Chan," misgendering, mispronouning, and ungendering of people's names, as well as "deadnaming" (using the birth name of a person who has chosen another name to reflect their actual identity).
Norms of formality and politeness in addressing people may vary according to the language in which discourse is conducted, the cultural setting, and the situational context. We may sometimes find it difficult to find the appropriate level of formality, as when we're sincerely unsure of whether to address someone by their first name or formal title. Addressing someone by their first name may be a sign of friendliness or unfriendliness, cordiality or antipathy, congeniality or condescension, affection or disrespect, depending on the social context.
We may often address people we feel personally close to with various terms of endearment, such as Honey, Darling, Dear, Baby, or Sweetheart. (However, these terms may also be used disparagingly by strangers or social adversaries.)
When someone speaks directly to us, we know that they recognize us as active or passive listeners, and that they may or may not expect us to respond or engage in dialogue with them. We also know when they aren't speaking to or addressing us at all, and when we're unseen, unrecognized, or ignored members of their audience.
The philosopher Monique Roelofs (2020) explains,
"Address and nonaddress, then, go together. The one often stands out against the backdrop of the other. The thin character of an orator's comments becomes apparent in light of our awareness of an ambit of understandings to which he might have attested but that go unnoted--those riveting themes we had hoped to learn about but that were never so much as broached in his speech. Nonaddress, in this case, informs us of an aspect of address."6
We also know when a text, word of admonition or advice, letter, or email has been sent to the wrong address. We know how reluctant we may be to reveal our own address to a stranger or to someone we don't have any reason to trust.
When we click on the link to a tweet, news story, or article on the internet, we often do so because we feel it's in some way addressed to us. It's been sent or directed to us, even if only by cookies or search algorithms. It recognizes us as members of its intended audience, and as actual or potential recipients of its content.
Roelofs (2020) also explains,
"In considering the scope of address, it is worth noting that objects can address us in ways that they were not necessarily designed to do. Just as my friend's yawn may address me in a way that she did not intend, the stool that was once meant for toddlers to sit on might now address older children and adults as a platform for reaching the cookies on the upper shelf or for making proclamations."7
Some modes of address may express respect or disrespect for the addressee. Respect may be expressed by the use of honorifics, while disrespect may be expressed by their omission. Disrespect may also be expressed by the use of slurs, racist or sexist epithets, and other speech acts that express disdain, ridicule, contempt, or hatred.
According to the linguist Roman Jakobson (1960), the six constitutive factors of any speech act or act of verbal communication are (1) the addresser, (2) the addressee, (3) the message, (4) the context, (5) the contact (or channel) between the addresser and addressee, and (6) the code (which must be at least partially shared by the addresser and addressee, and which allows the message to be encoded by the addresser and decoded by the addressee). Each constitutive factor determines a different function of language. The addresser determines the emotive (or expressive) function. The addressee determines the conative function (whose role is to produce action). The message determines the poetic function (whose role is focused on the message for its own sake). The context determines the referential (denotative or cognitive) function. The contact determines the phatic function (whose role is to start and maintain communication), and the code determines the metalingual function (whose role is to enable the addresser and addressee to share the same understanding of the meaning of words and messages). Each act of verbal communication may fulfill more than one of these functions, but its structure is determined by whichever function predominates.8
Modes of address may be direct, indirect, personal, impersonal, proximate, remote, formal, or informal.
Levels of address (psychological, moral, aesthetic, religious, social, or cultural) may correspond to levels of meaning. For example, if a text addresses its readers at a psychological level, then it may also have meaning for them at that level. A text that has multiple levels of addressivity (addressing its readers at multiple levels) may also have multiple levels of meaning.
We may also interrogate our own modes of address for what they reveal about our own conscious or unconscious attitudes about the given addressees. We may discover that we have previously unrecognized biases, presuppositions, or prejudgments about our addressees that change, hinder, or distort our relations with them.
FOOTNOTES
1Mikhail Bakhtin, The Bakhtin Reader, edited by Pam Morris (London: Arnold, 1994), p. 4.
2Ibid., p. 245.
3In July 2021, the Third District Court of Appeals of California ruled that regulations against intentional misgendering of transgender nursing home residents unconstitutionally restrict free speech. See https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/us/transgender-seniors-misgender-california-trnd/index.html.
4Chan Tov McNamarah, "Misgendering," in California Law Review, Vol. 109, No. 6, Dec 2021, online at https://www.californialawreview.org/print/misgendering/#clr-toc-heading-4.
5Ibid.
6Monique Roelofs, Arts of Address: Being Alive to Language and the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), p. 10).
7Ibid., p. 23.
8Roman Jakobson, "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics," in Style in Language, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge: The M.I.T. Presss, 1960), pp. 353-357.
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