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Pronouns of address in Swedish: social class semantics and a changing system1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Christina Bratt Paulston
Christina Bratt Paulston
Affiliation:
Department of General Linguistics, University of Pittsburgh
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Abstract

One who has lived soon an entire century must learn to change all her habits, and habits of address surely are not the easiest. What comes simply and naturally in one place is wrong and ill-mannered in another (Former servant-girl, informant KU 2849).

Even an ordinary simple worker has today became aware of the fact that he also is a human being, and that the great machinery would not function if he did not play his part. An old conservative postmaster's wife said once to my mother, who was the simple wife of a worker: ‘I think things now are not the way they should be; the workers' conditions are so good that they dress so well that nowadays one cannot tell the difference between workers and fine folk.’ This utterance from a woman who believed she belonged to the fine folk my mother never forgot, and I myself have also remembered it (Retired railroad worker, informant KU 2768)

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Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , December 1976 , pp. 359 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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