Social Deixis in Hadiyya

International Journal of Language and Linguistics 2014; 2(5): 301-304 Published online September 10, 2014 (http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/ijll) doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20140205.12 ISSN: 2330-0205 (Print); ISSN: 2330-0221 (Online) Social deixis in Hadiyya Dereje Adane Department of English Language and Literature, Arba Minch University, Arba Minch, Ethiopia Email address: [email protected] To cite this article: Dereje Adane. Social Deixis in Hadiyya. International Journal of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 2, No. 5, 2014, pp. 301-304. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20140205.12 Abstract: The concept of social deixis and its definition are stated by different scholars. Among these some are stated in this article in order to introduce the concept of social deixis to the reader. In the language, social deixis is expressed by both relational and absolute deictic terms.Relationaldeictic terms: age, marriage, circumcision status, and kinship are important constituents to show social deixis in the language.In Hadiyya, absolute deictic terms:office-related respect and mahaaraano ‘people who have socio-cultural respect’are also used to show social deixis. Keywords:Social, Deixis, Hadiyya, Relative Social Deixis, Absolute Social Deixis 1. Social Deixis Jaszczolt (2002: 197) says, “Social deixis concerns social relationships between participants, their status and relations to the topic of discourse. Relationships that are relevant in this type of deixis include [those] between the speaker and the addressee, between other participants, the speaker and the object spoken about and so on.” Levinson (1983: 89) and Jaszczolt (2002: 197) state that some of the grammatical devices that are used for the purpose of social deixis include pronouns of politeness, titles of addressee, kinship terms, and honorifics. According to Traugolt and Dasher (2002: 228), there are various approaches to politeness. One involves conversational maxims (cf. Leech 1983). Another is to view politeness “in terms of universal strategies that diffuse ‘face threatening acts’”, as discussed by Brown and Levinson (1987). There are two basic kinds of social deictic information which can occur in language (Levinson 1983: 90-91). The first conveys relational information. This may be between: i. Speaker and referent (e.g. referent honorifics) ii. Speaker and addressee (e.g. addressee honorifics) iii. Speaker and bystander (e.g. bystander or audience honorifics) iv. Speaker and setting (e.g. formality levels)” (1983: 90) Such relational social deixis can be expressed by honorifics, but Levinson notes that there are other possibilities of social deixis which can be grammaticalized, e.g. via totemic relations, clan membership and so on. The second type of social deixis is absolute (Levinson 1983: 91). Here there are forms which are absolutely reserved for certain speakers (cf. Fillmore 1975) or forms which are absolutely reserved for certain authorized recipients. The prototypical case involves speech by, or to, a royal person. 1.1. Social Deixis in Hadiyya Levinson (1983: 63) says that “social deixis concerns the encoding of social distinctions that are relative to participantroles, particularly aspects of the social relationship holding between speaker and addressee(s) or speaker and some referent.” To study social deixis in Hadiyya as it occurs in the speech between the participants during the communication act, one must have knowledge of the sociocultural background underlying the linguistic base. Thus, in Hadiyya, social deixis can be expressed by both relational and absolute deictic terms. Age, marriage status, circumcision status and kinship are social deictic factors that can be grouped under relational social deixis. Officerelated respect (e.g. the chief) and mahaaraano ‘people who have socio-cultural respect (a culture-specific term)’ are absolute factors. 1.1.1. Relational Social Deixis Respect to one’s elders is one of the social norms in Hadiyya society. This social value is conveyed via honorific and plural agreement markers on the verbs, which are relational deictic expressions because they are relative 302 Dereje Adane: Social Deixis in Hadiyya to the speaker (cf. Table 1). These indicate that the speaker is respecting the addressee and/or the referent. The verb agreement marker of second person honorific is identical to 2PL (cf. example (1)). However, the third person has a different agreement form to show respect. Table 1. The Hadiyya nominative, accusative and genitive pronouns Person Gender/Honorific 1 2 Common Common Hon Nominative Singular an at kiʔn 3 M itt’ F is Hon iss pronouns Plural Nees kiʔn-uww itt’-uww/ iss-uww itt’-uww/ iss-uww Accusative Singular eese keese kiʔne itt’o ise pronouns Plural neese kiʔn-uwwa itt’-uwwa/ iss-uwwa itt’-uwwa/ iss-uwwa isse (1) a. kiʔn-uww haraččo iikk’ – akko’o you.HON-PL pot break-SP.2PL ‘You (PL) broke a pot.’ b. kiʔn haraččo iikk’ – akko’o you.HON pot break-SP.2PL ‘You (HON) broke a pot.’ (2) an kiʔn-ẹ weeš –ummo I you.HON-ACC call-SP.1SG ‘I called you (HON).’ (3) itt’ kiʔn-mine waar – ukko he GEN.2SG.HON-house come-SP.3MSG ‘He came to your (HON) house.’ Another social norm of Hadiyya society is marriagerelated. In Hadiyya marriage culture, a man’s wife should show respect to all the family members of her husband and they respect her too. This respect is not based on their age. She never calls her husband’s father and mother by their Genitive Singular ikikiʔnitt’is- pronouns Plural nikiʔn-uwwitt’-uww/iss-uwwitt’-uww/iss-uww- iss- names. She cannot even utter the names of other things that start with the same sound(s) as her husband’s father’s name. For example, if her husband’s father’s name is “hallaama” his son’s wife may not utter the word halliččo ‘donkey’ as it is, but must change the initial sound(s). For example, she may say iyyamiččo, which is associated with iyya ‘carry’. In addition to age and marriage, in Hadiyya, circumcision can also give rise to respect. In the culture the person who covers the eyes of the boy while he is being circumcised earns great respect from that boy. In such cases, as above, this respect is again conveyed via honorific personal pronouns and verb agreement. Kinship terms show social deixis in Hadiyya. These kinship terms cannot appear as absolute forms (“father” etc.), but must morphologically show a kinship relation to somebody (“my father” etc.) and hence are deictic. The Hadiyya kinship terms are presented in the following table. Table 2.The Hadiyya kinship terms. Kinship Terms Iyyumma iyyanna lobaayye abbaayyo amaayye eeše adaayye annabbo Gloss ‘my mother’ ‘my father’ ‘my eldest sister’ ‘my eldest brother’ ‘my aunt (maternal)’ ‘my uncle (maternal)’ ‘my aunt (paternal)’ ‘my uncle (paternal)’ Kinship Terms is-ama is-anna is-lobaayya is-lobabbayyo is-amaayye is-eešimma is-ada is-annabbaayyo Most of these terms are used both for 3rd-person reference and as terms of address. However, in Hadiyya, iyyumma ‘my mother’ and iyyanna ‘my father’ are not used as terms of address. Instead, the child calls his/her parents by maternal and paternal substitute nouns.1 In the language the most common substitute nouns are aačče, aayya, aadde for mother and abba and abbaabba for father. Letus see some examples below. (4) a. aaačče meer-iinse šonkoora mom market-ABL sugarcane eeb-e 1 Note that the speaker may use his/her mother’s or father’s kinship term for 3rd-person reference while talking about them. Gloss ‘her mother’ ‘her father’ ‘her eldest sister’ ‘her eldest brother’ ‘her aunt (maternal)’ ‘her uncle (maternal)’ ‘her aunt (paternal)’ ‘her uncle (paternal)’ bring-2SG.IMP ‘Mom, bring sugarcane from market!’ b. lobaayye eddečča aanš-e my older sister garment wash-2SG.IMP ‘My older sister, wash the garment!’ c. amaayye soodo waar-e aunt tomorrow come-2SG.IMP ‘Aunt (maternal), come tomorrow!’ d. eeshe t’orbeʔe gob-e uncle ball sew-2SG.IMP ‘Uncle (maternal), sew up the ball!’ The kinship terms in (4) above are serving as addressee2. 2 In Hadiyya, when the addressee is directly called, the final vowel is not International Journal of Language and Linguistics 2014; 2(5): 301-304 The same kinship terms can also appear as a 3rd-person referent, as in (5). (5) a. an annabbo iitt – oommo I uncle love-FUT.1SG ‘I love my uncle (paternal).’ b. an adaayye weesh-ummo I aunt call-SP.1SG ‘I called my aunt (paternal).’ 1.1.2. Absolute Social Deixis In Hadiyya absolute social deixis expressed in two ways: formal or office-position related respect and mahaaraano ‘people who have socio-cultural respect’. Formal or officeposition respect is expressed by the social dectics in Table 3. These forms are absolutely reserved for the authorized recipients, usually in formal speech for official purposes. Table 3. The Hadiyya absolute social deictics Absolute social deictic terms 1. hibbantakkoʔoo/haydantakkoʔoo 2. hibbamakkoʔoo/haydamakkoʔoo 3. abbaačč 4. aayyičč GLOSS ‘Your Excellency/Honor’ ‘His/Her Excellency/Honor’ ‘Mister’ (Amharic ato) ‘Miss/Mrs’ (Amharic wäyzärit/wäyzäro) In the above table the first two absolute deictics are formed from hibba ‘charisma’ and hayda ‘honor’. These are used here as verbs (e.g. ‘to give charisma’), and as such are followed by the passivizer –m–. Then SP.2HON takkoʔo and SP.3HON -akkoʔo are attached and the absolute deictics are formed by lengthening the final vowel –o. In the language hibbantakkoʔoo and haydantakkoʔoo are used interchangeably, and likewise hibbamakkoʔoo and haydamakkoʔoo. The usage of these dectics in actual speech is that term 1 or 2 is followed by 3 or 4, based on the addressee’s gender and person.3 For example, for masculine 2nd person you would say hibbantakkoʔoo/haydantakkoʔoo abbaačč ‘X’ ‘Your Excellency/Honor Mr. ‘X’’. See the following example. (6) hibbamakkoʔoo abbaačč dilaam his.Excellency Mr. Dilamo soodo waaččamo waar-akkamo tomorrow Wachemo come-FUT.3HON ‘His Excellency Mr. Dilamo will come to Wachemo tomorrow.’ The second kind of absolute social deixis is shown by mahaaraano ‘people who have socio-cultural respect’. In Hadiyya culture the procedure for being admitted to the status of mahaallano is too complex to discuss here. Ruther, my focus here is to show the connection between mahaaraano and social deixis. When someone gets mahaallaano4 ‘socio-cultural royalty’, every individual of the Hadiyya people will respect him irrespective of his age. devoiced as usual. This is probably because the addressee-noun (vocative) is followed by a pause. 3 Numbers (1-4) in this context refer to the numerals in Table 3. 4 In Hadiyya mahaallano is given only for males. 303 This respect is manifested by their title, honorific personal pronoun and verb agreement. The names of titles and procedures for giving thetitles are discussed in detail by Eshetu et al. (2011). There are 13 such titles; some of them are: gadapp’i garaada, asmaačče, daddaaččo.See the following example. (7) daddaačč lopp’is beeballa Daddaaččo (title) Lopp’iso yesterday waar-akkoʔo come-SP.3HON ‘Daddach Lopiso came yesterday.’ 2. Summary In the Hadiyya language, social deixis is expressed by relational deictic terms. Social respect has several sources in Hadiyya society. It can come from age: in Hadiyya aged people get respect. Another thing that conveys respect is marriage status and circumcision status. Kinship terms also indicate the status relationship of the referent to the speaker. All these are used to indicate relational social deixis. Absolute deictic terms are also used to express social deixis. This absolute social deixis takes place during formal speech (to show office-related respect) and in any speech of speaker with/about mahaaraano ‘people who have sociocultural respect’. These different types of social respect are expressed by honorific personal pronouns and honorific subject agreement on the verb. Abbreviation . 1 2 3 ABL ACC F FUT GEN HON IMP M PL SG SP Morpheme boundary Portmanteau morphemes First person Second person Third person Ablative Accusative Feminine Future Genitive Honorific Imperative Masculine Plural Singular Simple past References [1] Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in [2] Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [3] Eshetu Tumiso. 2003/2011. = እ ሸ ቱ :ጡሚሶ ደ በ በ :ጃ ካ ሞ ሚሊዮ ን :ወ /ሰ ን በ ት ኤርኪቦ:አየለ. የሀዲያ ብሔር ባህላዊ የዳኝነት ስልጣን አሰጣጥና የሽግግር ስርዓት ጥናታዊ ጽሑፍ:: ያልታተም 304 Dereje Adane: Social Deixis in Hadiyya [4] Fillmore, Charles J. 1975. Santa Cruz Lectures on Deixis 1971. Bloomington: IULC. [7] Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [5] Jaszczolt, K.M. 2002. Semantics and Pragmatics: Meaning in Language and Discourse. London: Longman. [8] Traugott, Elizabeth C. and Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [6] Leech, Geoffrey N. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.