Sir and Ma'am

[Babs]

Honorifics with first names are as old as anything. I'm sure Solon can tell us what the Roman equivalent was. In Spanish we use don and doña as honorifics with people's first names, as a mark of respect. My great-grandmother was "Miss Jenny" to everyone. I call my neighbor Mr. Frank, and I'm 36 (he's mid 70's). There is plenty of doubt about your assertion that it is a holdover from slavery. You wouldn't call your servant "Miss" or "Mister." It wasn't reserved for servants who were "denied a surname of their own." It's a mark of respect, not denigration the way you imply.

Miss is a diminutive. Period. You can do your faux-expert mumbo-jumbo all you want, but you can't deny that for centuries it would have been unspeakably rude to address a married woman with an unmarried title.

As far as my assertion that the practice is a hold over from slavery, you've yet to cite anything either authoritative or relevant. If you would do the research before you post, you'd see that I am, in fact, correct in the origins of the usage. The pairing began when black houseservants were permitted to refer to the younger unmarried (but never married) women in the household by their first names, provided that Miss was prefixed. It evolved to the point that the female servants (regardless of age or marital status) were the ones referred to in this manner. So spare me your skeptical academic condescension, Mr. wuap.

I was playing off of Triplet's point that the entire honorific practice in general is evocative of antebellum south, and he is, as usual, correct.

Oh, and outside of exceptional cases, Rome didn't really have titles, certainly not with first name.

[TripletDaddy]

Honorifics with first names are as old as anything. I'm sure Solon can tell us what the Roman equivalent was. In Spanish we use don and doña as honorifics with people's first names, as a mark of respect. My great-grandmother was "Miss Jenny" to everyone. I call my neighbor Mr. Frank, and I'm 36 (he's mid 70's). There is plenty of doubt about your assertion that it is a holdover from slavery. You wouldn't call your servant "Miss" or "Mister." It wasn't reserved for servants who were "denied a surname of their own." It's a mark of respect, not denigration the way you imply.

As you describe it, how can it NOT be a holdover from slavery? If a slave did not refer to his or her "master" as Miss, Sir or Ma'am, what was the result? Are you saying slaves used those terms out of respect?

And now, more than a century later, we have Southern Cuffers complaining about how subordinates are not referring to them as sir and ma'am. It seems like we are both operating on a steady diet fed to us in our youth.

If it is a sign of respect, then earn it or do without it. As Tim pointed out, don't travel elsewhere around the country and expect people to conform to what many in the country consider to be a remnant of the greatest stain on human history.

It evokes slavery and servitude to you, perhaps because of the steady diet of exaggerations about the South that you've been force-fed by the news media and Hollywood stereotyping. It does not evoke those images for those people whose culture it represents. Black and white say it in the South. To us it evokes images of family, friends, neighbors, and good manners. We don't have a constant looking back to the plantation the way the rest of the country views us and our culture.

It is hard to exaggerate slavery. The steady diet of slavery, lynchings, segregation and forced integration as recently as around 55 years ago seems to be fairly factual.

However, I suppose it is possible. I am sure Southern blacks today LOVE referring to white superiors as sir and ma'am. All in the family, I guess.

[New Mexican Disaster]

Miss is a diminutive. Period. You can do your faux-expert mumbo-jumbo all you want, but you can't deny that for centuries it would have been unspeakably rude to address a married woman with an unmarried title.

As far as my assertion that the practice is a hold over from slavery, you've yet to cite anything either authoritative or relevant. If you would do the research before you post, you'd see that I am, in fact, correct in the origins of the usage. The pairing began when black houseservants were permitted to refer to the younger unmarried (but never married) women in the household by their first names, provided that Miss was prefixed. It evolved to the point that the female servants (regardless of age or marital status) were the ones referred to in this manner. So spare me your skeptical academic condescension, Mr. wuap.

I was playing off of Triplet's point that the entire honorific practice in general is evocative of antebellum south, and he is, as usual, correct.

Oh, and outside of exceptional cases, Rome didn't really have titles, certainly not with first name.

Is the origin of usage more important than the current usage? Especially when the current users are for the most part ignorant of the origin? The usage of honorifics may have come from the elites but it is now most closely adhered to by the working classes.

Nearly all of the adults in Alabama (where I have experience) referred to themselves as Miss ____, even if they were married. This seemed to occur more out of laziness than any grand plan. And it was nearly universal, with other adults calling one another after the same fashion. I was leery and tried to make my daughter call adult women by the correct title but it was difficult to keep track of who was married and who was not. She called everyone Ms., until as a matter of convenience and ease it became Miss and I gave up. Besides every time I insisted on the correct title everyone would look at me funny.

No one really seemed to care except the really thin skinned people.

[Viking]

Is the origin of usage more important than the current usage? Especially when the current users are for the most part ignorant of the origin? The usage of honorifics may have come from the elites but it is now most closely adhered to by the working classes.

Nearly all of the adults in Alabama (where I have experience) referred to themselves as Miss ____, even if they were married. This seemed to occur more out of laziness than any grand plan. And it was nearly universal, with other adults calling one another after the same fashion. I was leery and tried to make my daughter call adult women by the correct title but it was difficult to keep track of who was married and who was not. She called everyone Ms., until as a matter of convenience and ease it became Miss and I gave up. Besides every time I insisted on the correct title everyone would look at me funny.

No one really seemed to care except the really thin skinned people.

Triplet, you really have little idea what you are talking about. And ironically you presumably raise your right arm to the square to sustain men who actively discriminated against blacks throughout the world. STFU

[Tick's wife]

I am in So. Cal, and I was raised saying it.

Even at 35 I still get folks that get mad at me for saying it. I always offer to allow them to call my mother and chew her out. It is her fault.

Just simple good manners.

oh and the Black Ladies love him for it.

[wuapinmon]

Miss is a diminutive. Period. You can do your faux-expert mumbo-jumbo all you want, but you can't deny that for centuries it would have been unspeakably rude to address a married woman with an unmarried title.

As far as my assertion that the practice is a hold over from slavery, you've yet to cite anything either authoritative or relevant. If you would do the research before you post, you'd see that I am, in fact, correct in the origins of the usage. The pairing began when black houseservants were permitted to refer to the younger unmarried (but never married) women in the household by their first names, provided that Miss was prefixed. It evolved to the point that the female servants (regardless of age or marital status) were the ones referred to in this manner. So spare me your skeptical academic condescension, Mr. wuap.

I was playing off of Triplet's point that the entire honorific practice in general is evocative of antebellum south, and he is, as usual, correct.

Oh, and outside of exceptional cases, Rome didn't really have titles, certainly not with first name.

You've cited nothing either. I'm speaking from my cultural knowledge. However, here's a source explaining its use. I'm not at work, so I can't really pull up all the big-daddy search functions to find you a peer-reviewed article, but I will tomorrow.

Also, regarding Rome, what of the constantly-used term "domina?" Do "sir" and "ma'am" not correspond to the French "sire" and "madame" that trace their roots back to the Latin. For example, ma dame>>>ma dama>>>ma doma>>>>>mea doma>>mea domina. See the Italian "madonna" for another example of this honorific in use. So, while you're going to come back and say that those weren't used with first names, you're ignoring the point that they were used as titles of respect. Sire, though I can't follow the etymology as well as ma'am (it's been 10 years since I had a Latin to Spanish class in linguistics), certainly has the same root as "signor" and "señor" and "senhor." Sir and Sire, are the same thing. So, if I said "Mister" or "Sir" or whatever, we're arguing about the same word, ultimately. I'm fairly positive that Mister is just another form of "My sir," though it could come down from the same root as master and magistrate.


English in the Southern United States
Studies in English Language
by Nagle, Stephen J.; Sanders, Sara L.
Publication: Cambridge, U.K., New York Cambridge University Press, 2003.

page 192-93

2 Interactional style: deferential politeness

2.1 Greetings and forms of address

Many of the features of southern style which have been remarked on have to
do with how interpersonal relations are indexed and negotiated in conversation. Southerners’ elaborate civility has been noted over and over, in popular and scholarly representations. Among the earliest studies of southern style is that of Spears (1974) on southern folk greetings and responses, which, as other observers have also more informally noted, are more elaborate and more obligatory than greetings elsewhere. In a study of expressions of local solidarity in New Orleans, Coles (1997) found that the use of local-sounding greetings was the strategy adopted most often by telephone callers who wanted to display their identification with radio talk-show hosts and a veterinary-clinic receptionist.

Coles also describes the use of particularly New Orleans-sounding forms of
address as a solidarity-building move: darling, doll, and babe are examples. While these particular items are characteristic of New Orleans rather than the South as a whole, forms of address in general are described over and over as being different and more significant in the South than elsewhere. Sir and ma’am are among the most frequently mentioned of the forms of address with particularly southern uses. The use of sir and ma’am to one’s parents, for example, as a required element of the answer to a yes/no question, is widespread in the South and not elsewhere, as is the use of sir or ma’am to peers or younger people.On the basis of observation, interviews, and questionnaires, Ching (1988) concluded that the central function of the southern sir and ma’am was to express deference, but that there were other
uses too: emphasis, and,among younger peers and when used to someone younger than the speaker, to express friendly solidarity. Simpkins (1969) notes that the same speaker may be addressed in different ways depending on which aspects of his or her social identity are relevant at the moment. In a study of the uses of ma’am and sir in the screenplay (by Horton Foote) and film (directed by Sterling VanWagenen) The Trip to Bountiful, Davies (1997) combined discourse analysis and a “playback” phase in which she asked Southerners to comment on the meanings of these address terms while watching clips of the film. Like Ching, she found that the core meaning was the expression of deferential politeness, or “negative” politeness in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) terms: the creation and maintenance of culturally appropriate social distance between speakers, so that potential impositions on others’ autonomy are avoided. In addition, Davies shows that shifts in the intonation accompanying the use of sir or ma’am can serve to foreground other aspects of the social relationship between speaker and hearer, so that, for example, a shift to a flatter intonation contour can index a shift to a less formal relationship. Ma’am and sir can also be used for emphasis, when the answer to a question is, for example, surprising or particularly significant. The conventional deferential meaning of sir or ma’am can, in some uses, be completely overridden, as when one of these forms is used sarcastically or in the course of a conversational negotiation for power.
Sir and ma’am are just two of a wide variety of address forms used by Southerners to index and manipulate social relations. In his childhood autobiography (Crews 1978), Georgia novelist Harry Crews describes a powerful feeling of connection with other generations of his family when he noticed that he was saying yes, sir to his uncle and being addressed by his uncle as son, just as his uncle addressed his own mother as ma’am and was addressed as son (1978: 164–5).

Here
is part of the conversation Crews re-creates, as the narrator, his grandmother, and his Uncle Alton operate on a rooster’s craw:

“Cut a little deeper in there, son,” said grandma.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Uncle Alton. “Son, git that turpentine swab right here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Clean it down in the corner, Alton.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Uncle Alton. “Son, I got the needle started, but I cain’t
git the end of it. See if you can.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. (Crews 1978: 165)

In Crews’ novel Body (1990), characters use a wide variety of address forms ( Johnstone 1992, 1994). To older people and to strangers to whom they want to display respect, Crews’ characters use ma’am or sir and Mr., Mizz, or Miss plus first name, as in “Mr. Alphonse, sir, I have come to ask for you daughter’s hand in marriage” (Crews 1990: 200). As did Crews’ uncle, older men use son to younger men or boys, as well as old son, boy, and bud; men address women they know as girl and as child. Women call men honey, old honey, and old thing. Many uses of these address forms, particularly to elders, display a sort of ritual deference, but other uses can help to defuse tension by putting the speaker’s deferential attitude on display at a key moment. Among peers, terms like old son and girl can signal closeness and solidarity, but other uses, particularly of terms such as bud and son, appear in bids for dominance or threats of belligerence, as in this response to a
challenge to “talk right”: “ ‘I come from the same part of the country you do,
old son,’ said Billy Bat, shifting on his heels. ‘I’ll talk any damn way I please’ ”
(Crews 1990: 209–10).

I'll go to the library and see if we have this proceedings, and post my findings if we do (I'll probably have to ILLiad it, though).

Ma'am and Sir: Modes of Mitigation and Politeness in the Southern United States
Author(s):
Ching, Martin K. L.
Source:
pp. 20-45 IN: Thomas, Alan R. (ed. & pref.); Ball, Martin J. (introd.); Methods in Dialectology. Clevedon; Multiling. Matters; 1988. (v, 699 pp.)
Notes:
Proc. of Sixth Internat. Conf. Held at Univ. Coll. of North Wales, 3rd-7th Aug. 1987
Series:
Multiling. Matters: 48

[Babs]

You've cited nothing either. I'm speaking from my cultural knowledge. However, here's a source explaining its use. I'm not at work, so I can't really pull up all the big-daddy search functions to find you a peer-reviewed article, but I will tomorrow.

Also, regarding Rome, what of the constantly-used term "domina?" Do "sir" and "ma'am" not correspond to the French "sire" and "madame" that trace their roots back to the Latin.

I'd be careful going this route, if I were you. Dominus and domina were used to denote ownership, meaning literally "lord/master." So it's fine if you want to make the argument that these are roughly equivalent to the current use of Mr./Mrs. (which were also originally used to denote the landed class and are themselves abbreviations of master), but to do so only furthers the original argument that the titles are evocative of the slave-master relationship. Personally, I don't see dominus/a as equivalent to the current use of Mr./Mrs./Miss, which is why I omitted them; but if you do want to equate them, that equivalence favors my position, not yours.

[Surfah]

I hope you don't mind but I edited the title because it was bugging the hell out of me.

[pellegrino]

I'd be careful going this route, if I were you. Dominus and domina were used to denote ownership, meaning literally "lord/master." So it's fine if you want to make the argument that these are roughly equivalent to the current use of Mr./Mrs. (which were also originally used to denote the landed class and are themselves abbreviations of master), but to do so only furthers the original argument that the titles are evocative of the slave-master relationship. Personally, I don't see dominus/a as equivalent to the current use of Mr./Mrs./Miss, which is why I omitted them; but if you do want to equate them, that equivalence favors my position, not yours.

What you're forgetting is that even lower classes (both in medieval and modern times) referred to each other with these honorific titles, whether they were landed or not. It's a matter of custom, tradition, and civility. I think you said it best when you said that "evokes" the antebellum period. It may well evoke such a period, but that doesn't mean it is used for the express purpose of perpetuating antebellum social castes.

The evocation of the south conjures up images ingrained into our cultural memory, precious few of which are positive, hence the problem most people have with using them.

[TripletDaddy]

What you're forgetting is that even lower classes (both in medieval and modern times) referred to each other with these honorific titles, whether they were landed or not. It's a matter of custom, tradition, and civility. I think you said it best when you said that "evokes" the antebellum period. It may well evoke such a period, but that doesn't mean it is used for the express purpose of perpetuating antebellum social castes.

The evocation of the south conjures up images ingrained into our cultural memory, precious few of which are positive, hence the problem most people have with using them.

Babes, stealing my thunder again.

I also allowed for cultural differences, saying that if Southerners felt it offensive or annoying that others do not afford them these titles, then they should stay put in the South, where the custom is still part of common parlance.

Your final paragraph mirrors my final point....just because other people don't use Sir and Ma'am doesn't mean they are being disrespectful. Perhaps they find such language uncomfortable....cutting too close for comfort to Southern stereotypes that still exist today....flying the confederate flag, for example.

The South Shall Rise Again!

[pellegrino]

Babes, stealing my thunder again.

I also allowed for cultural differences, saying that if Southerners felt it offensive or annoying that others do not afford them these titles, then they should stay put in the South, where the custom is still part of common parlance.

Your final paragraph mirrors my final point....just because other people don't use Sir and Ma'am doesn't mean they are being disrespectful. Perhaps they find such language uncomfortable....cutting too close for comfort to Southern stereotypes that still exist today....flying the confederate flag, for example.

The South Shall Rise Again!

See, there you go again perpetuating negative stereotypes, but then I would expect nothing less from someone (not just you in particular DDD) who has never lived in the South and has no ties to it. In a way it's rather convenient for Yankees and Westerners to perpetuate these stereotypes because it makes for a nice scape goat. As a friend of mine from the west (Colorado) once said "We don't have troubles with racism like the South does because we don't have many blacks here."

Southerners are proud of their culture, in some cases to their detriment, but when you focus solely on those negative manifestations of their culture you throw the baby out with the bathwater and condemn all aspects of Southern culture.

It was never my point to insist that others must use Southern manners in order to be polite, rather that those who mock Southern culture and associate it wholly with slavery, racism, burning crosses and lynchings really have no clue what Southern culture is or what it means to be Southern.

If indeed those terms "cut too close for comfort" because of the negative stereotypes of the South then perhaps those who find it uncomfortable should reevaluate their perceptions. It's not like "sir" and "ma'am" are or ever have been derogatory terms. Let Southerners call each other as they please and don't object to them calling you "Sir" or "Ma'am." It's all an attempt to be civil, something our society could use more of.

[Viking]

See, there you go again perpetuating negative stereotypes, but then I would expect nothing less from someone (not just you in particular DDD) who has never lived in the South and has no ties to it. In a way it's rather convenient for Yankees and Westerners to perpetuate these stereotypes because it makes for a nice scape goat. As a friend of mine from the west (Colorado) once said "We don't have troubles with racism like the South does because we don't have many blacks here."

Southerners are proud of their culture, in some cases to their detriment, but when you focus solely on those negative manifestations of their culture you throw the baby out with the bathwater and condemn all aspects of Southern culture.

It was never my point to insist that others must use Southern manners in order to be polite, rather that those who mock Southern culture and associate it wholly with slavery, racism, burning crosses and lynchings really have no clue what Southern culture is or what it means to be Southern.

If indeed those terms "cut too close for comfort" because of the negative stereotypes of the South then perhaps those who find it uncomfortable should reevaluate their perceptions. It's not like "sir" and "ma'am" are or ever have been derogatory terms. Let Southerners call each other as they please and don't object to them calling you "Sir" or "Ma'am." It's all an attempt to be civil, something our society could use more of.

DDD doesn't know his ass from his elbow on this topic. Now Babs is jumping the shark, too. The point is that current usage is far more important than origins. If we are going to hold ourselves to standards based on origin, it would be hard to communicate in our modern vernacular.

[pellegrino]

DDD doesn't know his ass from his elbow on this topic. Now Babs is jumping the shark, too. The point is that current usage is far more important than origins. If we are going to hold ourselves to standards based on origin, it would be hard to communicate in our modern vernacular.

As my former linguistics professor often said "Usage makes the rules."

[wuapinmon]

As you describe it, how can it NOT be a holdover from slavery? If a slave did not refer to his or her "master" as Miss, Sir or Ma'am, what was the result? Are you saying slaves used those terms out of respect?

No, I'm not. I'm saying that everyone, white and black, referred to older people, bosses, their own parents, in this way. It was just confined to slaves.

And now, more than a century later, we have Southern Cuffers complaining about how subordinates are not referring to them as sir and ma'am. It seems like we are both operating on a steady diet fed to us in our youth.

If it is a sign of respect, then earn it or do without it. As Tim pointed out, don't travel elsewhere around the country and expect people to conform to what many in the country consider to be a remnant of the greatest stain on human history.

I only do it when my wife's family visits me IN South Carolina; I said, "When they come to visit me." I never said that I expected subordinates (I don't have any) or students to use that. What I said was:

My students all say "Yes, sir" to me. I like it. I'd never correct them if they didn't, but I do like it when they do. Good manners have value.

And, I hope you noticed that I took Tim's point, well before you posted.

It is hard to exaggerate slavery. The steady diet of slavery, lynchings, segregation and forced integration as recently as around 55 years ago seems to be fairly factual.

However, I suppose it is possible. I am sure Southern blacks today LOVE referring to white superiors as sir and ma'am. All in the family, I guess.

Man, you're a good troll. Dammit. You got me. I just realized it.

[wuapinmon]

I'd be careful going this route, if I were you. Dominus and domina were used to denote ownership, meaning literally "lord/master." So it's fine if you want to make the argument that these are roughly equivalent to the current use of Mr./Mrs. (which were also originally used to denote the landed class and are themselves abbreviations of master), but to do so only furthers the original argument that the titles are evocative of the slave-master relationship. Personally, I don't see dominus/a as equivalent to the current use of Mr./Mrs./Miss, which is why I omitted them; but if you do want to equate them, that equivalence favors my position, not yours.

If the mainstream culture moves away from honorifics, and we all go by "Mac" and "Barbara," then so be it.

As for me and my house, we will sir the Lord.

I couldn't help myself. Puns are fun.