Social Deixis: The development of second person pronouns from Old English to the present

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Potsdam (Institut für Anglistik / Amerikanistik), course: Proseminar Deixis, language: English, abstract: The word "deixis" is of Greek origin and means "pointing" or "indicating". In linguistics this term denotes a word or phrase that directly and categorically refers to temporal, locational, or personal characteristics of a communicative event and its participants.

Deixis lies in between the fields of semantics and pragmatics. Linguists differentiate 5 categories of deixis: person, place, time, discourse and social deixis.

This paper will be concerned with the category of social deixis which encodes the features of the communicative event which mark the social identity of the speaker or addressee, and the social relationship that holds between them.

In particular, the study of pronouns has a high degree of relevance in our everyday lives, as their appropriate use has ever been the concern of (socio-)linguists and average users alike.

In this paper I will explain the dimensions of power and solidarity and analyse the development that 2nd person pronouns have undergone from Old English until today. Furthermore, my paper is concerned with non- verbal communication and cultural differences and it includes a discussion on the question "When is it likely that there is a change of address and who has the right to propose a change?".