REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER AND ADDRESSIVITY IN FICTIONAL DISCOURSE

 

 

Alcina SousaA green circle with white letters AI-generated content may be incorrect.

University of Madeira, Department of Languages, Literatures and Culture, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Portugal

 

 

 

Abstract

 

This paper intends to account for representations of gender marks indebted to addressivity in English as offered in Susan Lilian Townsend’s diary novels from a pragmalinguistic framework, also drawing on a corpus-based approach. Terms of address comprise social markers in everyday communicative practices be it in interpersonal, skilled professional and institutional contexts which are then evidenced in fictional discourse. This exploratory, qualitative and diachronic study has a focus on terms of address, like the commonly used honorifics in English (“Mr”, “Mrs, “Ms”, among other), and naming, as they occur in three novels by Townsend (1991-1999): Adrian Mole from Minor to Major (1991), The Wilderness Years (1993), and Cappuccino Years (1999). In characters’ interactions filtered by the marked diarist’s humorous turn-takings, as a self-proclaimed civilized man (Townsend 1999), addressivity is imbued with polite to impolite, with intimate to distant, and with colloquial to formal stances in English. The empirical analysis of (un)marked gender roles and relationships in fictional discourse as compared to uses in real life interactions point to a distinct use of honorifics which underpin multiple and shifting identities.

 

Key words: Terms of address; Honorifics; Naming; Gender; Adrian Mole’s saga.

 

 

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How to cite this paper: Sousa, A. (2023). Representations of gender and addressivity in fictional discourse. Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education – JoLIE, 16(2), 155–172. https://doi.org/10.29302/jolie.2023.16.2.9

 

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