Tu and Vous

Solidarity and Politeness

Tu and Vous

• Many languages have a distinction corresponding to the tu-vous (T/V) distinction in French, where grammatically there is you’tu (T) and ‘plural you’vous (V). The T form is sometimes described as the ‘familiar’ form and the V form as the ‘polite’one.

• Other languages with a similar T/V distinction are Latin (tu/vous), Russian (ty/vy), Italian (tu/Lei), German (du/sie), Swedish (du/nj), abd Greek (esi/esis).

• A book published in France entitled Savoir-wreen France (Vigner, 1978) gives the following advice to foreigners on the current use of tu and vous there.

• ‘Tu’ should be used between brothers & sisters regardless age, parents & children, between close relatives, betwen young people living or working closely together or between adults who have a relationship.

• ‘Vous’ should be used between strangers, between those who have no ties any kind and between inferior & superior.

Address Terms

• Address term is the normal term for a person to whom someone else (the speaker) speaks or ‘addresses’ an utterance.

• (TFL/FN) indicated inequality in power, that mutual TLN indicated inequality & unfamiliarity and that mutual FN indicated equality & familiarity. Other opinion is title alone (T) e.g. Prof, Doctor indicated the least intimate form of address or last name alone (LN).

Politeness

• Polite form is a form used to show deference to an addressee.

• The concept of ‘politeness’ owes a great deal to Goffman’s original work (1967) on “face”. Brown & Levinsion define ‘face’ as ‘the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself. They also distinguish between “positive face & negative face”.

Positive & Negative Face

• Positive face leads to moves to achieve solidarity through offers of friendship, the use of compliments & informal language use: we treat others as friends and allies.

• Negative face leads to deference, apologizing, indirectness and formality in language use: we adopt a variety of avoidance strategies.

Politeness in Javaness• Levels in Javanese:Krama inggil (high style, high honorofics)Krama madya (high style, no honorofics)Krama biasa (middle style, no honorofics)Ngoko sae (low style, high honorofics)Ngoko madya (lw style, low honorofics)Ngoko biasa (low style, no honorofics)

• Honorofics is pronoun, form of verb, etc, used in expressing respect for someone, e.g. Of higher social status.