Sunday, September 20, 2015
formal second person pronoun abolished in English, language reform in Sweden in 1970s
Previously English language has two types of second person pronouns like it still exists in many languages such as Bangla, French, Spanish, Thai, Japanese, Korean etc. These two second person pronouns are you[like apni] and thou[like tumi]. However, now a days only one second person pronoun(i.e. you) is used thus making it egalitarian.
http://www2.nau.edu/~eng121-c/politenessin%20AME.htm
By the fifteenth century, the use of you/ thou was an established index of social status. But it also acted as a marker of interpersonal relationships. (Notions of superiority/ inferiority were not solely dependent on rank or social class, but were applied to family groups too.) The choice of you/ thou during this time was governed by more contingent, context-dependent pragmatic as well as established social rules -- requiring a certain sensitivity of judgment on the part of the speaker. In fact these rules still hold; think about your response to the ways different people use your name. For instance, if your name happens to be James Penberthy, how would you react to being called 'Jimmy' or 'Penners' by a person you'd just been introduced to? In other words, the hearer can quite accurately calculate the speaker's attitude towards him by her choice of address form (whether name or pronoun). Consequently, the socially-oriented contrast of you/ thou developed interpersonal meanings.
Language reform in the early 1970s in Sweden discouraged the use of the formal second-person pronoun to address persons of high standing
http://www.everyculture.com/Sa-Th/Sweden.html
http://www2.nau.edu/~eng121-c/politenessin%20AME.htm
By the fifteenth century, the use of you/ thou was an established index of social status. But it also acted as a marker of interpersonal relationships. (Notions of superiority/ inferiority were not solely dependent on rank or social class, but were applied to family groups too.) The choice of you/ thou during this time was governed by more contingent, context-dependent pragmatic as well as established social rules -- requiring a certain sensitivity of judgment on the part of the speaker. In fact these rules still hold; think about your response to the ways different people use your name. For instance, if your name happens to be James Penberthy, how would you react to being called 'Jimmy' or 'Penners' by a person you'd just been introduced to? In other words, the hearer can quite accurately calculate the speaker's attitude towards him by her choice of address form (whether name or pronoun). Consequently, the socially-oriented contrast of you/ thou developed interpersonal meanings.
Language reform in the early 1970s in Sweden discouraged the use of the formal second-person pronoun to address persons of high standing
http://www.everyculture.com/Sa-Th/Sweden.html
Labels: equality
# posted by Abu Rashid @ 9:15 PM 
