Rules of address in secondary schools in Catania: Linguistic variation and its social/cultural value

Abstract

The present research was carried out in Catania, a town of 600,000 inhabitants on the eastern coast of Sicily, and was motivated by the observation of cases of nonreciprocity of address to female teachers in secondary schools. While male teachers were always addressed with their academic, professional titles, which have great, overt prestige in southern Italy, women, on the contrary, were often addressed as signora or signorina ‘Mrs./Miss’ in the vocative form. The main objectives of the research were to find out (a) which schools were involved in this case of nonreciprocity; (b) how many female teachers considered it a sign of respect or an act of discrimination; (c) if the linguistic imbalance reflected a social one; and (d) what were its psychological causes. (Linguistic imbalance, nonreciprocity of titles, asymmetrical address, social imbalance, Italian)