Variation in Address Forms for Arab Married and Unmarried...

Variation in Address Forms for Arab Married and Unmarried Women in the Workplace. 1. Introduction The present proposal handles the topic of address forms. Hence, it will introduce the basic concepts which are effective in dealing with address forms for Arab married and unmarried women. The politeness theory, terms of address usage in workplace and their categories will be discussed. 1.1 Politeness Theory Politeness theory is a socio-cultural phenomenon based on the social values and norms of a particular community. Holmes (1995:285) reports that politeness is culturally determined, meaning what might be considered as polite in one culture, might not be polite in another. She defines politeness as taking account of the feelings†¦show more content†¦1.4 Social Factors Affecting Address System When any two people communicate, appropriate terms of address must be chosen in order to obtain an effective communication between them. According to Parkinson (1985) terms of address are not chosen randomly but they are governed by certain factors, such as speaker related factors, addressee related factors, speaker-addressee relationship, the interlocutors, and the context. 2. Review of Related Literature The main goal of this study is to investigate the sociolinguistic structure of women terms of address usage in workplace. This part tries to review a number of related studies in different languages, mainly English and Arabic. Mehrotra (1985) describes the forms of address in Hindi in relation to the socio-cultural setting of using them. He notes that variation in the usage of address forms is the meaning of reflecting interlocutors social background or characteristics as they define and affirm both identity and status of the speaker and addressee. Oyetade (1995) provides a descriptive analysis of the forms of address system in Africa, a language spoken in the western part of Nigeria. He finds that the choices that interlocutors made are influenced by the perceived social relationships that exist among them. Their age, social status and kinship are the major principles governing address usage among