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Master Thesis
You still say hello!
A corpus study of the greeting words hi, hey and hello in spoken American English
Author:Oskar Rydblom
Supervisor: Magnus Levin
Examiner: Mikko Laitinen
Semester: VT2014
Subject: English
Level: Advanced
Course code: 5EN01E
Abstract
This study examines the usage of the three greetings words hi, hey and hello in combination with greeting questions, such as how are you, and terms of address, such as Bill, Mr Jones or Dad, in spoken American English. The investigation identifies some of the patterns and rules that govern greetings sequences and to what extent social factors like gender, age, social class and social context inform greeting. Theories within the area were then used to identify greetings in the Longman Spoken American English Corpus that were then entered into a database along with information about the speakers. Using filters the greeting pairs where then sorted by different factors, such as gender, to extract quantitative data on the distribution and frequency of usage. The results showed variation influenced by social factors and formulaic patterns of greeting sequences. The study concludes that hi is the standard and most frequent greeting in spoken American English, hey is a more vernacular form and hello seems to be more frequently used when respecting the boundaries of the addressee. Greeting sequences also follow a predictable pattern based on the greeting word used or the greeting questioned asked. More formal terms of address (for example Mr Lastname) are used in more formal settings or when there is a significant age difference between speakers. If a greeting question (how are you?) is posed it is usually returned, answered or both, and if answered often with a short reply providing minimal information (fine). Hence, both the choice of greeting word and the use of terms of address and greeting questions are influenced by social factors like age, gender, social class and formality of setting according to observable patterns. Keywords: Hey, hi, hello, greetings, adjacency pairs, politeness, Longman Spoken American English Corpus, corpus linguistics sociolinguistics, phraseology
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Theoretical background 3
2.1 Discourse 3
2.1.1 Analysing discourse 4
2.1.2 The formulaic nature of discourse 6
2.1.3 The social aspect 8
2.2 Politeness 10
2.2.1 Politeness, class and social groupings 13
2.2.2 Politeness, age and gender 15
2.2.3 Politeness and culture 16
2.3 Greeting words and greeting questions 17
2.3.1 Definitions of words and terms used in this study 21
3 Material and Method 23
3.1 The Longman Corpus of Spoken American English 23
3.2 The pilot study 26
3.3 Creating a database 29
3.4 Method of analysis 38
3.5 Problems and limitations 39
4 Results 41
4.1 Frequency of usage 41
4.1.1 Variation according to age 43
4.1.2 Variation according to gender 47
4.1.3 Variation according to social class and context 50
4.2 Adjacency pair relationships 55
4.2.1 Greeting questions and terms of address 60
4.2.2 Gender, age and social context in greeting sequences 65
5 Discussion 72
6 Conclusions 75
List of references 77
1
1 Introduction
The importance of language in social interactions has long since been known and books on etiquette have been quite popular throughout the ages, one of the most famous ones being Erasmus On the Civility of Children's Conduct published around 1530. Knowing how to successfully navigate social situations has therefore long been considered very important. The idea that the use of language could be viewed as performing an action, put forward by Austin (1962), Searle (1969) and others, resulted in a strong interest in the study of what is now referred to discourse analysis. The maxims formulated by Grice (1975) suggested that interactions operate within a framework, obeying rules that can be studied and expressed scientifically. These rules for social interaction and interactions between cultures drew the attention of many linguists, anthropologists, philosophers and sociologists. The studies produced at the time often centred round the concept of politeness. The notion of face, presented by Goffman (1967) and further explained in section 2.1.3, played an important role in this field. The focus of this paper is on one of the more basic features of social interaction, the greeting. Greeting words and greeting questions are a universally occurring phenomenon. While they may vary between cultures they tend to occur in one form or another in the civilizations we know. They are a vital part of social interaction and among the first form of social interaction that children acquire (Greif & Gleason 1980). Greetings are the traditional way of initiating a spoken interaction between two or more people and it is often considered impolite to leave them out (Labov & Waletsky 1967). It is therefore important for speakers to be aware of these social rituals so that interactions function smoothly. Since greetings are often formulaic in nature, the area of linguistics known as phraseology is also one of interest. This study sets out to examine how the usage of, and response to, the greeting words hi, hey and hello varies in different social situations and what patterns these greeting words, sometimes combined with terms address or greeting questions, follow. The example below shows a greeting initiated using the greeting word hi and a term of address (a name) and a response to the greeting that contains the greeting word hi and a greeting question. Hi Alex. <0932> Hi how are you? (LSAC) The paper aims to fill a gap in research since previous studies focus mainly on the general function of greetings, or more narrow studies of a particular group or 2 community, and not the usage and variety of choices made by English native speakers in different social groups. The study conducted in this paper provides empirical data to support these more general theories. The first section provides a summary and discussion of the progress made in discourse, politeness and phraseology since the second half of the 20th century. Insights gained from these different fields were then used to pose a framework for dealing with greeting phrases that can be tested empirically. Identifying flaws and benefits of this kind of model of using a corpus could prove useful to further studies on social norms in language. This study is focused on the greeting words hi, hey and hello and conducted using principally the Longman Spoken American Corpus (from now on referred to as LSAC in this paper). The aim, research questions and scope below show the focus of the investigation. Aim: The aim of this study is to show that greetings are formulaic in nature and that the choice of greeting words and questions are connected to social factors such as gender, age, social class and context.
Research questions:
How does the usage of the greeting words hi, hey and hello vary in regards to gender, age, social status and context in spoken American English? What if any patterns do greeting sequences follow? If patterns do exist, how can they be explained and how are they connected to gender, age and context?
Scope:
The study looks primarily at 366 greetings and responses in American English found in LSAC and how the greeting words hi, hey and hello are used and combined with terms of address and greeting questions. The social factors that may influence change taken into consideration are age, gender, social class and context (the situation in which the conversation takes place). These 366 pairs do not account for all the greetings in LSAC, only the ones where one of the three greeting words selected was used and sufficient information on speakers was available. Other corpora are used only for comparison of general frequency to assess how representative LSAC is. 3
2 Theoretical background
The theoretical background for this study is divided into three main sections. The first section deals with some of the main theories on discourse and discourse analysis as well as a short chapter on phraseology that expands on frequently occurring words and phrases. In the second section the field is narrowed to the study of politeness in which cultural aspects of language are also discussed. The last section deals with greeting words and phrases specifically.
2.1 Discourse
Before diving into the topic of discourse the term discourse needs to be defined, as opinions often differ on the details. In their introduction Jaworski & Coupland (1999) cite a number of different definitions of the word discourse to illustrate the broadness of the term. Two of them put together aptly sum up the main view this thesis takes on discourse: language in use. As such it can not be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the purposes of (Brown & Yule 1983:1) ons of the social are distinguished knowledge, social relations, and social identity and these correspond respectively to
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