First-name address, interpersonal interaction and the public face: the case of the Russian language

Abstract

This article describes the vocative use of first names. The literature cites addressing a person by a given name as the preferential mode of politeness when the addressee's name is known to the speaker. The study aims to clarify this idea, demonstrating limitations on using first names imposed by the interactional context. It also seeks to examine the role of given names and terms of address in general from the perspective of linguistic politeness. The data used in the study consists of fragments of spontaneous interactions from the Russian Nation­al Corpus and native speakers' metapragmatic commentaries collected by the author. The methodology draws on Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's theory of linguistic polite­ness. The literature review and data analysis revealed two interactional contexts where ad­dressing by a given name is foregone or does not seem to be preferential despite the speaker's acquaintance with the corresponding term of identification: communication between family members and service encounters. For some pieces of data, a description framed in terms of linguistic politeness appears to be suitable. Yet, a first-name address can function as not only a mitigating device but also a potential face-threatening act. Finally, there are many instances where politeness issues do not seem relevant. In these cases, it seems appropriate to describe the vocative function as a background operation to maintain social relations.