| Terms of address can reflect a society's norms and values, and often provide information about a speaker, such as age, gender, occupation, and social status, as well as information about the relationship between the interlocutors, such as degree of intimacy, deference, social superiority, or level of solidarity. While standard modern English uses only one pronoun of address for the second person singular (you), the address systems of other languages are often much richer and more complex in their degree of differentiation. Since such incongruity may pose a challenge to the L2 learner, it is important that foreign language materials provide an adequate treatment of address forms. This dissertation examines Vietnamese, Portuguese, and German systems of address, focusing on the strategies employed in the translations and descriptions of address terms found in dictionaries and second language learning materials. This information was compared to native speakers' descriptions of their address systems, and the L2 materials were evaluated according to their accuracy, thoroughness, and consistency. The present study suggests that a number of foreign language learning materials do not provide a consistent amount of information for all of the address forms, often providing more information on male forms than on female forms, which in some cases were even omitted. Furthermore, the labels used to describe the register of the address form were not always representative of the context in which the term was used. |
