-Zoe Yu
When skimming the chapter of Interaction in Van Herk’s book, the naming practice drew my attention. It was being inquired into and multiple examples of naming were offered to exemplify how people address each other in different scenarios and areas. This inspired me to recall several relevant experiences in my life.
It first occurred to me as a problem when I was doing my first masters in the university where I was preadmitted to the graduate program through merit assessment. I contacted a supervisor who’s both an administrative leader in the school and a teaching staff in the College of Foreign Languages and International Education. As I drafted him the first email, I was pondering and hesitating which title I should be using to address him. Should I initiate with Director, Professor, Dr. or Mr.? It was difficult for I had never met him and knew little about his personality yet I didn’t want to fail in this attempt to secure him as my supervisor. Therefore, I decided to use the safest bet—“Laoshi”（老师）, which means “Teacher” in Chinese. Unexpectedly, he was an amiable and welcoming person, and replied me soon with an immediate arrangement of a first meeting in person. When I went to see him in the office, he tested me on my English proficiency and translation skills, and gladly informed me that I am eligible to be his disciple. Meanwhile, he suggested me calling him “Shifu”（师父）, which means “Master and Venerable Father” in traditional Chinese culture. This is a naming which is ideographically expressive, professionally accurate and socially intimate with appropriateness. It indicated his position as a master in the area of expertise, an instructor in the faculty and a senior in the workplace, which maintained the basic power relationship between a supervisor and a student but without being authoritative. Our communication was therefore rather frictionless thereafter. However, a joke was made when I mistyped the word “师父” as “师傅” in an email. He replied and reminded me, “师父” is someone you follow and learn from, yet “师傅” is someone who serves you as a driver or porter in the market. As a matter of fact, in Chinese society, we still call people who pursue a skilled-work career as “师傅”, which means a qualified worker in an industry at a certain age and usually male in gender (female workers are also started to be called so since the establishment of PRC, but more rarely). I was embarrassed and also perplexed as it didn’t seem to be such a big difference. When I called the skilled workers “师傅”, I also meant it politely and respectfully, though I didn’t necessarily mean that I would learn the techniques from him/her. It was when I realised people tend to bear a sense of “social status” in mind especially when they are “somebody” in the community.
I deemed myself as someone socially fair and unconcerned until two months ago when something similar happened. As I arrived at Montreal and tried to find an apartment, I came across a girl from China in the group of alumni and we decided to rent together. She was 9 years younger and had no working experience, which to me was a complete student. However, I was blanked for a second when she called me by my full name after knowing I was a teacher. And as she called me so on several occasions for several times, I can’t help but told her that I am not used to being called so by a younger individual. And she wasn’t able to understand how I felt and asked me how she could address me better. I said it is good by my English name. After the incident, I reminisced, why would I feel offended or anxious about being called full name in Chinese? It seems that the social status of a teacher has pinned into my mind and an addressing with the family name and name usually came along with something serious at workplace when a colleague or manager did so. Moreover, she’s at the age of my former students. While gradually getting used to “Zoe”/ “Chu” which suggests a more ambiguous connotation of age, profession or social identity, I experienced a long duration of identity transition for the past semester.
Such self-reflection threw light on my failure to understand my father, who resisted us calling him intimate names. It is more like a habit of being official and cautious in the workplace which spread to the home setting unconsciously. Whereas my mom and grandparents who are less power-oriented in their careers, are more light-hearted with nickname calling, and even sometimes jokingly using insignificantly abusive words such as “Big Ugly” or “Little Stupid” to call me from downstairs when they pass by my study. These are similar to “Silly Billy” and “Hilly Billy” of the British.
In a more far-reaching societal range, the naming between me and my friends kept altering with time. In high school and university, we called each other full names in the first year, which implied the intention of being mutually respectful, cherishing and as an individual of a well-educated manner. As we familiarised with each other, we nicknamed each other with monikers or pet names emerged in random daily interactions, and these nicknames lasted for several years after we graduated while still connected closely. However, they diverged into two directions after 3 years of working life. A part of the nicknames faded away, and full names came back to dominance when in touch. Other nicknames shifted into even vulgar and insulting names to show stronger bond and more casual relationship among small groups of friends. For example, one of the friends works in Huawei, and as the logo of Huawei is a chrysanthemum, he was then named after a flower. But because chrysanthemum in Chinese also has a euphemistic and humiliating meaning of “anus”, and in contrast, Huawei is a weighty corporation, he was thus nicknamed “old sunflower”. As we grew older and more experienced in our own professional fields, cliché but more steady titles such as “老(old)+name” or “阿(ar-prefix to names) +name” are used to synchronise with our social identity.
After coming to Montreal, it is somehow an issue that seems ignored. As of the record, I had written emails to apartment managers, private landlords, and sometimes people in other services when I first landed, a majority of them simply wrote back with a “Hi/Hello” or sometimes without a greeting but started straightforward with the content of response. Naturally, they would omit the inscriber too. It was odd to see such emails to begin with, because in our practice and test of academic English for school application and immigration, the language was so standard and formal and convinced us that is what is ought to be said and written when we reach out to people in the target community. Therefore, when it turned out differently, we felt the gesture of formality and politeness missing and somehow disrespected or offended depending on the language the replier used in the main body of the letter.
I wonder if this is a decline of the English colonism, or a simplication of social etiquettes, or because it is a region of French regime so there are another set of public rules that we are not aware of, or merely because we’re newcomers and anonyms. Nevertheless, I would be eager to find it out through constant observation, and hopefully to explain it socially and linguistically as the book Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour did.
References
[1] Fox, K. (2004). Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. Nicholas Brealey.
[2] Oakes, L., & Peled, Y. (2017). Chapter 4: Linguistic citizenship: identity, integration and interculturalism. In L. Oakes & Y. Peled (Authors), Normative language policy: ethics, politics, principles. Cambridge University Press.
https://mcgill.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1013889112
[3] Rampton, B. (2013). Styling in a language learned later in life. The Modern Language Journal, 97(2), 360–382.
https://mcgill.on.worldcat.org/oclc/7021591755
[4] Van Herk, G. (2012). Chapter 9: Interaction. What is Sociolinguistics? John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
