formal and informal language

so i was reading the what-do-you-call-your-parents asks on seebs' blog and and got over-excited and dumped a huge thing in his submit box before i saw "reblogs/replies preferred" (sorry seebs!) and it turns out, i still want to talk about things related to formal and informal language and hear what other people think about it.

it's kind of a huge category so i'd like to start by asking about titles. do you use titles to address or speak of other people? when and why? for people who speak more than one language, what do you find different about the use of titles in the languages you speak? do you prefer the usage in one language over another, and why?

 

hmmm.
I use titles to speak of certain people. if I'm talking about a teacher I don't know well, for instance, I refer to them as 'Mr./Ms./Mrs. (name)'. if I know them well, I usually call them by their first name now that I've graduated--like, my teacher for history, I call him Don now instead of Mr. (last name). also, I went to an alternative school for a bit that promoted calling the teachers by their first name as a sign of respect for the students--rather than have the teachers be on a level above the students by saying you couldn't call them by their first name, teachers and students would use each other's first names, thereby being shown to be equals. similarly, when I'm talking about my friends, I use their first names, because we're equals. if I'm referring to my parents outside the home, I use their first names, because they're shitty parents and I refuse to consider them people I should respect--as opposed to at home, where I pretend to respect them and call them 'Mom' and 'Dad' so they don't smack me upside the head for calling them Fran and Greg.
so for me, it's a respect thing. are we equals? do I respect you? do you respect me? if we're equals, I use first names. if I respect you and you respect me but we're not equals, I'll use last names or a specific title, like 'Aunt', 'Uncle', 'Mom', 'Dad', etc. if we're presumed to not be equals but you don't respect me, I am not going to respect you and therefore I will use your first name.

edit: I should mention I'm in the US

 

I've been in Finland so long that I would be totally at sea if dumped back into the US and expected to figure out which standard of formality I was supposed to use, since they vary so widely and really artificial social conventions like that just confuse me.

In Finland, you don't commonly get that rigid formality - there isn't much of a hierarchy here, probably because there's never been a feudal system or a monarchy. Children call their teachers by first name or simply 'Teacher'. You don't Mr. or Ms. someone except in very formal circumstances (maybe meeting the President at the Independence Day ball), or if you're very old (my partner says those forms of address started falling out of common use in the 50s). People usually seem to refer to their parents by Mom or Dad, but some refer to their parents by first name and it's not particularly strange - and same with extended family.

 

that's really interesting to me, because here it's considered a sign of disrespect to call a teacher or a parent by their first name, and I know I am not the only kid who'd get smacked upside the head for calling mom and dad by their first names, or even calling their extended family just by their first names. I have to put 'aunt' in front of 'Carol' when I'm talking to my Aunt Carol. again, titles are a thing of respect, and respect where I am, or at least in my family, seems to be determined by how close you are in age or what position you're in--for instance, with my cousin who's my age, I just call her Katie. but my cousin Lisa, I call 'Cousin Lisa', because she's older than me and therefore apparently more deserving of respect. similarly, my teachers were in a position of power and we were expected to respect that position and not call them by their first names. but now that I've graduated, two of my teachers, Don and my old art teacher, insist that I call them by their first names to signify we're now equals.

 

In central Canada.

Growing up, I was told to initially call people by Mr/Mrs/Ms Lastname, as a sign of respect, and then if they told me I could use their first name (which often happened with, like, family friends), then I was good to go. But authority figures (incl teachers) were always M/Mme whatever (went to French school). Once I got to university, that slackened a bit - profs whom I saw on a regular basis usually ended up being on first-name terms, but occasional profs were still Dr/Prof Lastname. And I do still have one prof who prefers Dr Lastname, even though I would actually call us friends now. I dunno, she might change her mind on that sometime? Meh.

My mom and dad are just mom and dad usually. If I need to get their attention in a group of people, though (like at the mall or in a store or something) then we use first names. (it helps that my mom has an uncommon first name.)

Strangers I will default to sir/ma'am if they are at least one generation older than me. People of my age usually just get a "hey" (like if they dropped something) - "dude" or "miss" if i need to be more specific. (I can't think of a more polite masculine word I use ... hm)

Within the family, there's a lot of Aunt/Uncle Firstname, with optional Great- tacked on if I'm talking about them instead of to them. Cousins and such are just first names though. It's mostly a generational marker, and the Aunt/Uncle does get dropped probably about half the time.

Anyone in a position of authority will get their proper prefix used - Dr if that's known, or Sister/Father, or Professor, or just Mr/Mrs/Ms. I think that's generally considered to be the polite way of doing things around here.

However. In the opera world, stage management is usually only Firstname (ease of getting people's attention, also speed/efficiency), but the principal cast are always Mr/Mrs Lastname. Unless you know them personally and you're on first name terms with them.

 

And that's funny to me in turn because that seems to me like it's less about respecting others, and more about obeying one's place in the hierarchy and exerting control. Like, the very fact that it's okay to hit a child for daring to imply they're equal to an adult says to me it's about power and control.

I think it's worthy of note that in Finland, it's very much against the law to strike a child - even for 'just' a spanking.

 

that's....honestly pretty true, actually. it really is about power and control, but it's disguised as being about respect. it just might be the part of the US I grew up in, but hitting your kid for stepping out of line is okay in my family and several of my friends' and one of my partner's families. it's also totally legal. one of my partners has actually reported being pushed and hit if he steps out of line even a little bit, which always concerns me. but it really is about control and power, and that's honestly part of why I choose to refer to my parents as their first names outside the home--I refuse to let them have control and power over me when they're not directly around and capable of forcing it on me.

 

When I was growing up, it was definitely about the respect thing - at least among liberally minded people, whom I grew up amongst. There is/was a certain amount of hierarchy in there, but I never got more than a "don't call them by their first name, that's rude". I don't know how serious an infraction of that would be in more conservative areas around here.

 

I don't even call my old teachers by their first name, out of continued gratitude and respect for the things they taught me. Its "professor" to their face and "professor so and so" to third parties.

I use familial titles for everyone older than me in my family, and affectionate diminutives for my younger siblings, though they sometimes get first names. There's something a little cold about using names. The exception is i call my stepdad by his name because he asked me to. It still feels weird and like breaking the Rules of How Things Are Done.

Other adults when I was a kid were mr and mrs so and so to third parties and sir or ma'am to their face. Now strangers get those rules and close friends get first names. Children get first names if they're not known well and diminutives if we're close.

...probably worth noting that this is one of the things I got out of books and aside from "mom" or "dad" my siblings both use firstnames all around, so.

 

I've always lived in pretty conservative areas, and you can and will be smacked by your parents and/or dragged home from an event if you don't use a title when you're supposed to. my parents were shocked when the teachers at my alternative school said that students were supposed to call them by their first names. they called it a sign of disrespect and said that the teachers weren't supposed to be our equals, they were our higher-ups and should be treated as such, and that none of us would respect the teachers--yet ironically, I respected those teachers more than nearly any other teacher I came in contact with, because they gave me respect and control over things I deserved to have control over.

 

I have always called my parents 'mama' and 'papa' (Dutch words for Mom and Dad). I couldn't imagine doing anything else. When I was younger I used to call my aunts and uncles aunt/uncle first name, but that tapered off when I got older and one of my uncles got a new girlfriend who I didn't really consider an aunt. Nowadays I generally call them just by their first names in person, but when I am speaking of them to other people I generally still put the honorific in front. Except for that uncle's girlfriend, who is now his wife and they have a son together :P

Strange adults I always say Sir or Madam if I don't know their names, and Mr/Mrs lastname if I do. I also use the formal form of 'you' unless they tell me to use the informal version of 'you'.

Because of my position in the hospital, there's this weird thing where I call the junior doctors by their first names, and I call all the specialists (who are actually qualified surgeons/paediatricians and such) Doctor So-and-so.

I always called the professor I did research with Professor so-and-so and the formal you, until he told me to call him by his first name and the informal you, and it was just weird, because by then I had known him for a year and a half I think.

 

It still makes me sad that english dropped the familiar you and just used the formal one with everything. Its such a nice relationship marker. :(

 

my parents are "mama" and "daddy" to me and "my mother/mom" and "my father/dad" to others, unless i'm taking a phone call for them, in which case they're "mr./mrs. lastname."

[edit: when i was a child] my mother wanted me to address adults as "mr./mrs. lastname." sometimes a babysitter was "miss givenname." relatives get a title or a title + given name, or an affectionate nickname in the case of grandparents. the only exception to this was my aunt, who was only 10 years older than me and functioned more as a rarely-seen older sister than an aunt. i called her by her given name. but my uncle, who was only a little older than her, and was much more distant, got his title + given name.

i was homeschooled so the only teachers besides my mother i had were a few sunday-school teachers and a couple of online teachers - those were all mr. lastnames.

for me, i think i've mostly thought of it in terms of distance/closeness. the only people i feel completely comfortable addressing by and speaking of using their given names only are my siblings and a couple of close friends. [edit again! and my much-younger-than-me cousins.] i feel awkward calling acquaintances and employers by their given names, even when we're on friendly terms, even when i know it's the socially appropriate thing to do, and it takes me a long time to get used to. i noticed recently that i refer to acquaintances or casual friends as "givenname lastname" when speaking of them to other people, unless i'm talking to a friend of theirs.

i grew up in the u.s., but i think i don't have a really good grasp of social norms here, maybe because i was homeschooled, or maybe just because my personality is like this, or maybe because the u.s. is a really big place and has different rules in different places, and i haven't integrated enough into any one place to grasp the rules about how you talk to people. so i prefer to go by the rules my mother taught me, but those don't match up with everyone else's all the time. as a child i used to be annoyed when adults would introduce themselves to me by their given name only, because then i'd have to balance "my mother wants me to address adults with a title to be polite" with "this adult wants me to call them without a title and it would not be polite to ignore that."

anyway, because of that, i get pretty excited when i find a language that has markedly different formal and informal speech, and rigid rules about when to use them and who to use them with. korean and japanese are what i'm thinking of in particular, and i know at least a few european languages use both the formal and the informal "you," unlike english. also, @Lissiel i totally agree with you on being sad about losing the informal "thee/thou." my mother and i watch korean dramas together, and it's such an interesting thing to be able to listen for the moment when a character drops the formal speech with another to indicate a change in the relationship.

(also, i just looked up you vs thou and, according to a random internet page, "you" was plural until the 13th century, when it started being used as a sort of equivalent to the french vous? i did not know that. it seems kind of odd that people adopted a plural as an honorific and then dropped the familiar entirely. why, english, why?)

 

Because english is drunk and should go home.

 

My school considered formality very important. We were expected to call all our teachers Teacher Lastname and use formal 'you' when talking to them, they called us by first names and with informal 'you'. So when I got to high school and some of the teachers started using formal 'you' when talking to us students, it felt like they were taking us seriously.

I use formal 'you' and Mr/Mrs if necessary when talking to my university profs unless they explicitly say they feel uncomfortable in the plural. When talking about them with other people, I usually use their last name or "professor". (Here is a sort of disjoint between Estonian and English. I don't actually call them "professors" in Estonian, since most of them aren't, they're docents or lecturers or assistants by title. But I don't think there's an exact English match for the Estonian word for "person that teaches in university", since lecturer isn't exactly what I mean and professor is a different title.)

I call my parents "mother", "father", my stepmother and my significant other's parents by their first names. Other relatives are either Grandmother/Grandfather (applies also to stepmother's mother and significant other's grandmother), Firstname (all cousins my age) or Aunt/Uncle Firstname (everyone else, regardless of our actual relation). Only using the first name for those relatives who usually also get a title would be a very noticeable sign of disrespect.

I think I use titles more in English. In all the other languages I speak the thou/you distinction neatly conveys the level of formality. In English I would have to mind the Mr/Mrs/Professor/Sir/whatever.

 

This is actually a frustration I have in Britain as well; 'professor' is a thing separate from, though not exclusive with, 'person who teaches you', and I get endlessly confused and frustrated there when talking to Americans.

My parents insisted on 'Mummy' and 'Daddy' generally; this caused an issue as I got older, since they wouldn't accept 'Mum/Dad' and I felt that the others were a bit childish. My teachers were always Mr/Mrs lastname, because FORMALITY. I generally found friends' parents awkward when young, because they would often ask you to call them their given name, but that also felt overfamiliar; this extends to lecturers and professors at university, with the appropriate title.

 

I've always called my parents by their first names (except when referring to them to a third party who wouldn't know them by name, of course) because my mom has always been super uncomfortable with being called "Mom" or anything of the like. I think my dad would have liked it, and when i was a little kid I called him [name]-Dad, but eh, too bad for him.

Extended family is all first names, except grandparents who sometimes get Grandma X or Grandpa Y (more so when I was younger).

Teachers have most always been Mr. or Ms. in direct address and unadorned last name when talking about them when they aren't there. Some teachers just Weren't Formal Enough for that level of formality to seem anything but absurd, and so mostly got referred to by unadorned last name or some derivation thereof. Would have gone with first name without any discomfort if such was requested, but I don't recall that it ever was for my teachers.

Similarly professors now in college. I don't know that all of them would insist on that level of formality, and I know one of my profs who commonly goes by her initials to her students, but personally I feel like they've damn well earned the Dr.
I'll probably switch to first names or full names once I've graduated and am more their peer than their student, but might still use Dr. for people with doctorates that I don't know personally, as a general respect thing. At least in direct address when just meeting them. Full name or unadorned surname would probably make more sense socially if just discussing their work or the like, i don't know.
Hard to say in advance, a lot of this is by gut sense of respect and formality with regards to both the person being discussed and the person I'm talking to. My brain runs on sempai-kohai/seniority/earned-respect hierarchies a lot, especially in education or academia.

Nobody else really gets honorifics -- that's pretty much Teachers Only. I might use Mr. or Ms. for a boss if I felt like I had to, but I would likely not be happy about it, whereas I'm perfectly willing to extend that formality to teachers. Some other positions of authority might get Position Lastname (eg. Dean W) if I felt like they deserved or had earned that respect. Or I guess to make their position/relationship to me clear to a third party, even if i would not normally give them the honor. I suppose I might also use Mr. or Ms. to preface someone's name (without objection) if I didn't know them personally but had to talk about them to a third party in a semi-formal or formal communication or the like. Would feel stilted, but then that is a stilted situation by nature.

Strangers often get Maam or Sir in direct address, in inverse proportion to their perceived social standing, because fuck that noise.
Well, there's also the witheringly polite Maam or Sir for strangers who are being asswipes.

For people referring to me, I'm with my mom in terms of vastly preferring being referred to by first name, unless I get a doctorate (because again, earned), in which case I would quite like the Dr. (doesn't hurt that my last name sounds p badass with a "Dr." in front) but would not insist on it unless intentionally pulling rank on someone being egregiously rude or disrespectful.

 

My parents are "mom" and "dad" and always have been. Close friends of my parents get "aunty [first name]" and "uncle [first name]" and I've asked my friends to have their kids refer to me the same way if they ever have them. Parents of my friends got "Mr. [last name]" and "Mrs. [last name]".

Teachers got first names up until high school, when they too became "Mr. [last name]" and "Mr.s. [last name]", except for one who was "Dr. [last name]" because he insisted on "Dr." and we would all roll our eyes and humor him. In college it was "Professor [last name]".

Professors were definitely a weird thing for me when I was in grad school. We were encouraged to call a lot of the professors by their first names and I really couldn't; a lot of the other grad students reported the same. I don't know if this being a math department contributed to the informality or what.
I did manage to start calling some of them by first names after my defense, but even now there are some who definitely get referred to by "Professor [last name]" because I'm either too distant socially or they just feel too dignified in my mind to go by their first names.
This is especially awkward regarding my adviser, who I feel like would appreciate my calling him by his first name, and furthermore the particular diminutive that he goes by, but I really really cannot bring myself to do so, partly because he was my adviser, and partly because he feels too up there as a Mathematician.

And then there's this other professor who we all still refer to by his last name to remind us of how scared we are of him.

 

Parent names is kinda a big deal with me due to what was a deliberate attempt by my mother to alienate my birth father. My mother was always "Mom"

Then there was my Stepdad, who was "Dad" because you can't choose your "Father" but you can choose your "Dad".

And my "Father" or occasionally "sperm donar" depending on how much of an edgy bitter teen I felt like that day.

Now that I've gotten out of Shit Creek, my mother is "my mother" due to deliberate distancing tactics unless I slip and call her Mom out of habit or sarcasm, my stepdad is "my stepfather" for the same reasons.

My father is now "my Father" for emphasis on familial ties and has gone back to being "Dad" and "Daddy"

My mother-in-law has the most affectionate use-name. She's Mama (LastName), Mama, Mama Bear, etc. Probably has something to due the fact that I adore her, and with her adopting me as her favorite daughter upon marriage, over her son sometimes :D