ALS 2010 Annual Conference Programme - Australian Linguistic ...

Bin Towairesh
Abdullah Bin Towairesh (King Saud University, The University of Queensland)
abdullah.bintowairesh@uqconnect.edu.au
My Father, I Am Your Father: The Use of Address Inversion in the city
of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Keywords: Address terms. Address inversion. Saudi Sociolinguistics.
Address inversion involves addressing someone with a term that expresses the
speaker’s role in a dyad rather than the addressee’s, e.g. a mother calling her
child mama (mother), an uncle calling his nephew Qammo (uncle). The use of
address inversion can be found in many languages around the world including
Turkish, Bengali, French, Italian, Russian and Arabic (Braun 1988). This phenomenon
has also been referred to in the literature by other names including “Reverse Role
Vocatives” (Rieschild 1998) and “Bi-polar Address Terms” (Yassin 1977).
This paper examines the use of address inversion in the city of Riyadh and documents
the different structures and functions for this practice. The data on the
use of address inversion in this region comes from questionnaires, focus groups,
the analysis of a Saudi television show, and the observation of natural speech.
The forms used for address inversion in Riyadh include: 1. Basic Kinship terms (KT),
2. Child-talk kinship terms, 3. Kinship terms diminutives and 4. The “wa-ana-KT”
compound.
Speakers in Riyadh use these forms in different contexts that range from expressing
affection and admonishing gently to giving instructions and parental advice. The
choice between the basic kinship terms and the child-talk kinship terms is usually
based on the age of the addressee. This distinction can bee seen in the following
examples:
(1) Hala Abu-i, . . . wayne alQial
Hello my Father (son), . . . didn’t you bring your children?
(a father, early sixties, to his son early thirties, greeting him when he came to
visit)
(2) xalas ya baba aÃles
Ok baba (my son), set down
(a father, late twenties, addressing his son. 5 years old, asking him to stop
being rowdy and set down)
The “wa-ana-KT” compound, however, is more likely used in the contexts of giving
instructions, advice and warnings.