On Politic Behaviour: The Personal Pronoun as an Address Term in the Ndebele Language of Zimbabwe

Abstract

The use of the personal pronoun as an address term in different speech communities around the world is widely documented. The pioneering work of Brown and Levinson (1987), Brown and Gilman (1968), Friedrich (1972), Gumperz (1982), and Gumperz and Hymes (1972) on politeness strategies long established that both singular and plural personal pronominal forms are often used to express respect, social distance, intimacy and solidarity. More recent studies (Watts 2003; Allan and Burridge 1991, 2006; Allan 2012) concur with the early studies on politeness strategies. Most of their conclusions are based on data mainly from French, Italian, Russian and English speech communities. This chapter presents the most recent empirical evidence from the Midlands Ndebele speech community of Zimbabwe to support the argument that the personal pronominal address system is more complex than is currently acknowledged in the literature. The data indicates that the use of both the singular (wena - you SING) and plural (lina - you PL) forms of the personal pronoun in the Ndebele language betrays an uneasy and unpredictable situation. This uneasiness and unpredictability revolves around a lack of clarity about when it is deemed appropriate to be euphemistic, when to display solidarity or endearment and when to express social distance.