Episode 1 engl.: Du or Sie
Episode 1 engl.: Du or Sie – my experiences with the choice of form of address as a topic in German class [2304 words]
Formal or informal forms of address
What could be a better topic for a first episode than forms of address? It's a nightmare (German: Albtraum with b and in the sense of Nachtalb oder Nachtmar, not with p like the Alps, but about that another time), a nightmare for anyone learning German as a second or foreign language. It is particularly tricky for people who are not familiar with a formal or emphasised polite form of address in their original language. The problem with forms of address thus affects, for example, the currently over 370 million people who speak English as their mother tongue and who all use the formal second person singular you. Similarly, Swedish native speakers are likely to have a hard time with the formal German Sie.
Since we are dealing with each other informally here in the blog, I will choose the informal form Du. I think we are all interested in language, and perhaps some of you are interested in teaching language to others, too. Context and community of interest motivate my choice of address here. I hope that is ok.
Du or Sie – the choice of address as a topic in German lessons
When it comes to the form of address in German, there are many complex decisions that need to be made quickly and intuitively in order to choose the correct of the two possible forms of address – Du or Sie? To do this, in my early sociolinguistics seminars at the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England I used a diagram by Patrick Stevenson. This diagram showed that social categories such as age (adult – child) or relation (related – unrelated) play a role in the choice of address. (Incidentally, the diagram was from The German Speaking World from 2003, which was new at the time.) I explained to my students that there are conventions regarding address that are usually unspoken. For example, something like ‘here at the office, everyone is on first-name terms, but we address our customers formally’. Unless you happen to have a friendly colleague to explain it to you, you'll have to figure it out on your own.
With the diagram I actually wanted to show my students that there are certain rules available for orientation. (And besides: the diagram was in the recommended textbook and I was still inexperienced.)
Description of the salutation problem
The Du is chosen as the form of address within families and among friends or close acquaintances. In more formal contexts, especially in a professional or public setting, the Sie is more likely to be used. The form of address is asymmetrical when there are strong inequalities between the people speaking to each other: adults use the informal Du with children, but children say Sie back, especially older children in secondary schools.
When choosing the form of address, it is therefore important to consider factors such as the age of the people involved, one's own social position and the degree of familiarity with each other. Such assessments are difficult in themselves. In some situations, it takes experience and good judgement to recognise the appropriate form of address.
Traditionally, until a few decades ago, strangers would initially address each other formally. After a longer period of acquaintance, the person with a higher social standing could offer the Du to the person of lower rank. As a rule, it was therefore usually older people who offered the Du to younger people. But as already mentioned, there are other factors in the social hierarchy that determine a person's social status: in addition to age, there is gender, social position (professional position, education, acquired or inherited titles) and the circumstances of the conversation. The decision between Du and Sie has been further complicated by social upheaval, especially by the so-called student revolution of 1968. Young people consciously broke with old rules and taboos and chose the address Du contrary to the rules. This was seen as a provocation and to express contempt for old hierarchies. A new system emerged that mixed with the old system and partly overlapped it. In short: a typical language change situation that leads to temporary chaos before new rules take hold.
Examples of forms of address over time
Two examples of the complexity of choosing a form of address and of linguistic change come from my own family. While it had long been common to use the informal Du in private contexts around the year 2000, my parents only started offering the Du to some long-standing acquaintances at the age of around 70. Because they came from a time when students used the polite form of address at universities and even at secondary schools to address each other, they had always stuck to the formal form of address. And this despite the fact that they had known each other for decades, had shared much, and had gone through a lot together. But the acquaintance had begun on a formal level with the Sie, and the gradual linguistic change from the Sie to the Du had taken place independently of it, so that the revision of the form of address within the good but not very close friendship was long in coming.
During the same period, my mother told me with outrage about a ‘young man’ (around mid-to-late thirties) who, when they first met, used the Du and her first name without asking and, as she thought at the time, in a cheeky and ill-mannered way. (Incidentally, only a few years later I noticed she was much quicker to offer the Du to ‘young persons’ herself.)
So when teaching in England, I discussed the historical background of today's confusion with my students and explained as indicated above: there are various points of reference for choosing between Du and Sie and with a little practice you can master the choice of address without stumbling. When in doubt, I advised: wait and see what others say.
As extreme cases, I mentioned contexts with a particularly formal hierarchy, such as universities. The fact that, for example, the head of a faculty or department is traditionally entitled to the title Spektabilität was highly amusing to my students. However, this form of address is rarely used, and when it is, it is in formal situations. Should they ever have to give a speech in front of the faculty and need to address the dean directly, I reassured them that they would have the opportunity to do some research beforehand. Nowadays, people don't necessarily insist on such historical titles. A polite formal address is sufficient. (Who knows how many ‘spectabilities’ are not even aware that they are entitled to this title? [pun not intended])
As a difficult case, I mentioned the unlikely situation in which I would suddenly be face to face with the then reigning Queen Elizabeth II or find myself in a room with the Pope. In such a situation, there would always be an entourage of palace or Vatican employees who I could ask: ‘How should the Queen or the Pope be addressed?’ Purely theoretically, that is, in the case of unbuffered and spontaneous direct contact with highly venerable persons with rare honorary titles – we ventured into fantastic details in these discussions – I myself would rather ask directly ‘How should I address you?’ than later live with the memory of having embarrassingly missed the mark with respect to Her Majesty or His Holiness.
‘Withdrawing the Du is like declaring war’
In one of the seminars mentioned, a student fittingly told us about a sweat-inducing, painful experience with a premature Du. He had spent a year abroad at an Austrian university. In school in England, a lot of emphasis had been placed on oral communication and the situations practised had mostly been interactions with people of the same age. He always used the Du. This allowed him to get along well with the other students and participate in seminars, and his German improved steadily, both, practically and on the level of linguistic theory. Only the form of address did not come his way for a long time. It was only after many months that he noticed that no one addressed their professor informally. In fact, he was a particularly venerable and famous academic, whom even his colleagues addressed formally. It finally and unpleasantly dawned on my student that he was the only one addressing the professor informally and on a first-name basis. He had read the first name on the office door on one of his first days in Austria, for which he had consider himself very resourceful.
The following seminar sessions had been an unpleasant gauntlet for him, during which he completely avoided addressing the professor directly and referred to him only indirectly, using a wide range of sometimes absurdly complicated linguistic devices. He did not want to draw attention to his faux pas by switching back from Du to Sie. We all felt for the student in his lively account and suffered with him through the pain of the failed choice of address.
At this point, I felt like a competent teacher: historical background, language theory and examples were ticked off. And the teaching unit was crowned by the active participation of the students, especially the entertaining and instructively embarrassing case from their own ranks.
Unfortunately, I consequently experienced an embarrassing moment myself, namely when marking the written exams in this seminar. There are sometimes moments in teaching when you don't know what exactly went wrong in class. The question then becomes whether you feel embarrassed for yourself or for others. In response to a question about the general problem of choice of address, a few students wrote in their written exam: ‘The forms of address in German are so complicated that Germans themselves never know how to address each other. They are constantly confused and often embarrassed. That's why when you meet new people, you always have to ask whether you can address them formally or informally. In addition, you have to research which unpronounceable title you should use to address them.’ Oh dear!
Variations and changes in address
And it used to be even more complicated. In addition to the formal Sie, you could use the more familiar Er (He) or Ihr (You, plural) to subtly indicate the level of politeness – or even to be deliberately impolite. And to this day, forms of address using wir (we) and man (one) are a way for German speakers to subtly position themselves in the complicated world of human relations. Furthermore, there are various hybrid forms in different regions or social environments, such as the IKEA Du (informal address for everyone), the Hamburg Sie (Sie + first name), the so-called Rhenish or Munich Du (Du + surname) and the ironic-historicising, informal so-called Berlin Er (indirect address using the third person singular ‘Did he fib?’). These forms each serve their own specific purpose (I introduced them here with their common names).
There is nothing particularly German about this. I already mentioned the informal form of address in Sweden. In Sweden, as in Germany, there was a reform of the form of address from the late 1960s onwards. Starting from very formal address conventions, the informal address corresponding to the German Du quickly became customary. In just a few decades, it became widely normal to address each other informally in private, in public, and at work. To this day, only members of the royal family are usually not addressed informally, but rather indirectly (see Berliner Er). So you wouldn't ask the Swedish Crown Princess Victoria ‘What do you think of this topic?’ but ‘What does the Crown Princess think of this topic?’ Similarly I know from a Catalan friend that she addressed her father formally (but not her mother) until she was an adult, when her father finally offered her the informal address.
Incidentally, there seems to be a revival of the old formality happening at the moment: the formal Sie is coming back. In Sweden and in Germany. This is an interesting process. As a sociolinguist, I can well understand that there is something to be said for the Sie. When you use the informal Du, it is more difficult to keep formal distance from each other. This can be positive, for example, when you are addressed informally in a shop and then feel more personally noticed and better attended. But it can also be perceived as negative, for example, if you try to maintain professional distance at work to separate work and private life. Or if the sales talk in the shop is perceived as intrusive and pushy because of the lack of distance. This can even spoil the fun of browsing and drive you away.
Even after more than twenty years, I still can't offer you a simple scheme for choosing the right form of address. In any case, I no longer use the diagram from the textbook. But as I did back then, I advise: when in doubt, it's always better to use indirect forms of address and fallback strategies first until you can assess the situation. Ideally, there are people in a similar position to yours that you can imitate. First observe, then choose the form of address. This is better than going completely wrong my former student and then embarrassingly beating about the bush. Because what he intuitively and full of horror grasped towards the end of his stay in Austria: ‘Withdrawing the informal address is like declaring war’. (I think this statement comes from the Germanist Werner Besch, who has published a lot on the subject of address, only I can't find the quote anywhere...)
I'd better sign off now. More next time. Until then: take care!
And if you have a question or a comment: I look forward to hearing from you.
