Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

9.2 Language and social relations
Unit 9 Language and society
Section 2 Language variation

At the same time as language constructs a social reality for us, it also constructs and shapes our social relationships. When we speak or write, we speak or write about something but we also speak or write to someone. Consequently, every time we speak or write we articulate our social identity in relation to the social identity of the hearer or reader: as Valentin N. Voloshinov (1973) pointed out, every utterance is a bridge between self and other. One way in which this works is through the choice of address terms, or more generally in the way that the text codifies the position of its addressee (see Unit 15, Positioning the reader or spectator). The incumbent of the White House is not addressed in press conferences as ’Bill’ or ’Ronald’ or ’George’, but as ’Mr President’, or ’Sir’, or even ’Mr President, Sir’. Similarly, exchanges in the Westminster Houses of Parliament have elaborate codes of address in which speakers in the lower house refer to each other as ’the Right Honourable Lady’ or ’my Right Honourable Friend’ and to members of the upper house as ’my noble Lords’. Such formulations, involving titles and honorifics, encode social distance, formality and status in graduated ways. Title (Mr President) is more formal than Title + Last Name (President Bush) - which in turn is more formal than First Name (George). Collectively, such formulations constitute a system of modes of address. Selecting from within the system is a way of defining (and redefining) the nature of the relationship between speaker and hearer, addressor and addressee. In addition to direct address, of course, the audience is also addressed by implication. In effect, texts project or invoke ’a position’ - a framework of beliefs and common understanding - from which they make sense.

Both types of address - direct and indirect - work hand in hand. Consider, for instance, Henry Fielding’s novel, Tom Jones (1749), which frequently uses direct address to define and redefine the relationship of the narrator to the reader:

We are now, reader, arrived at the last stage of our long journey. As we have therefore travelled together through so many pages, let us behave to one another like fellow-travellers in a stage coach, who have passed several days in the company of each other; and who . . . mount, for the last time, into their vehicle with chearfulness and good-humour . . .

And now, my friend, I take this opportunity (as I shall have no other) of heartily wishing thee well. If I have been an entertaining companion to thee, I promise thee it is what I have desired.

(Book XVIII, chapter 1)

Notice that ’the reader’ is not only addressed as such but is also being constituted, both directly and indirectly, in quite specific terms as singular (’thee’), as equivalent to a companion or friend, as capable of being ’chearful’ and ’good- humoured’ and so on. Indeed, the positive, ideal traits of sociability, benign good-humour, tolerance and conviviality that are so much espoused in the narrative world of the novel are also projected outwards onto its implied addressee.

The mode of address in Tom Jones is worlds apart from the less formal, offhand, but strictly impersonal opening of Forster’s Howards End (1910):

One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.

Thus, every text, spoken or written, through its modes of address organizes social relationships. This is achieved partly through address terms (gentle reader, Mr President, etc.). We should note also that language organizes social relations by means of its capacity to perform actions in words in relation to the addressee. Through words we can question, command, state, challenge, promise, insult, offer, invite, request and so on. Many of our most important institutions depend upon using words to perform quite specific actions, whether it be in the context of a marriage ceremony, Parliamentary debate, a job interview or union negotiations.