simont | The thing is, Fred…

The thing is, Fred…

I've been idly wondering for a while about the circumstances under which people use other people's names while talking to them.

My personal idiolect almost doesn't contain the concept. I just don't ever find it natural or instinctive to randomly drop somebody's name into the middle of a sentence addressed to them. ‘Yes, Joe, but you haven't considered…’. I'll use somebody's name at the start of a sentence to get their attention, if I think they don't already know I'm talking to them (e.g. in a large group), but the only circumstance I can think of under which I'll use it later in the sentence is if I realise half way through the sentence that the person I'm aiming it at isn't listening (i.e. I should have used it at the start of the sentence but neglected to).

Other people I know will do it slightly more often than I do, but still not very often; it doesn't seem common in general. It slightly surprises me to hear my name used in this way by someone talking to me in person, and it definitely surprises me when someone goes to the effort of writing it in an email to me, where there's absolutely no possibility of me suddenly assuming they're talking to somebody else.

Yet it's much more common in fiction: I often notice it in dialogue in books, and its high frequency there seems faintly unrealistic to me. Presumably it doesn't seem that way to the authors, and presumably that's because in their idiolect it's perfectly normal. (Either that or there's a widespread convention of doing it in written fiction specifically, perhaps for some practical reason such as making sure the reader doesn't lose track of which side of a long dialogue is which. This is an interesting theory but doesn't seem particularly likely to me.)

I worked with a guy some years back who had the interesting habit of only using your name in this way if you were annoying him. For a while I thought this might be deliberate (a subtle signal to back off or re-evaluate your behaviour), but now I have a different theory, which is that it's completely unconscious and has to do with what he's concentrating on. As long as you're arguing with this guy over (say) a technical issue, he's just thinking about the issue itself and all his statements are focused on it. Even if you disagree with him, as long as you're doing it by making intelligent statements about the topic of conversation, he can remain focused on that topic. But if you stop making sense, or display evidence of a clear misunderstanding, or reopen points he thought had been settled, or otherwise cease to argue intelligently, then he has to start thinking about you rather than the issue, because he needs to try to imagine what's in your mind in order to figure out what it is you've misunderstood or forgotten. And at that point, your name starts to show up in his speech simply as a reflection of the fact that it's having to show up in the forefront of his mind.

So that suggests the hypothesis that there might be a correlation between whether your idiolect has this feature and what sort of thing you like to think about. I probably hang around with people who have an above-average tendency to concentrate hard on things, either physical objects or abstract mathematical concepts, and one might reasonably argue that an author had an above-average tendency to concentrate on people due to the need to invent characters, think hard about their personalities and write about them all the time.

I'm unconvinced by that, though; it's a huge sweeping generalisation and probably completely wrong, and also it doesn't seem to fit with my feeling about why I don't use people's names when talking to them. You see, when I was a small boy I was unwilling to use people's names at all, even to get their attention, out of an irrational fear of getting the wrong name and looking like an idiot. (There was a specific incident that might have helped to give rise to this fear: a girl on whom I had a severe crush was apparently introduced to me under two different names by different people, presumably because I wasn't listening properly to one of them. Until I figured out which was her real name, I was unwilling to use either one, and reasonably so!) And I'd be more inclined to blame that known tendency of me for the nature of my own idiolect than any sweeping generalisation about geeks, but on the other hand that only applies to me and doesn't explain the general tendency I (think I) see around me.

Another possibility is that it isn't just the colleague I mention above: perhaps the use of somebody's name often occurs as a more general signal that they're exasperating you or being slow in some fashion. Given that a common reason for calling somebody by name is to get their attention in the first place (as I mention above), perhaps the re-use of the name in the middle of a conversation functions as a vague hint that they still ought to be paying more attention in some fashion. A brief thought experiment suggests to me that if I were to see (in writing) someone answering a question by saying ‘It's forty-two, Bob’, that would strike me as slightly hostile or mocking or indicative that Bob really should have known or worked out the answer for himself, and I'd imagine a slightly sarcastic tone of voice, whereas ‘It's forty-two’ feels purely factual. But then, that doesn't seem to fit with all the usages I encounter either.

So I'm stumped. Am I in fact wrong in thinking that my friends use this linguistic construction less often than other people, and in particular less often than characters in fiction? Does either of my half-baked hypotheses make any sense at all? If not, is there a better one?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

perhaps the use of somebody's name often occurs as a more general signal that they're exasperating you or being slow in some fashion.

That certainly fits with the way I do it. I almost never say people's names to them unless I'm having a hard time getting a simple point through to someone I suspect of missing the point on purpose. Naming no names, obviously. Otherwise, the only time I've really come across it is in salesmen.

Yeah, I was going to mention that it's very commonly done by salesmen and related lifeforms. A bit like the real-life version of a mail-merge.

And they seem to think it makes them sound more like your chum -- look, they're addressing you by name as if they've known you all their life! -- even when your real mates likely never address you by name except at the beginning of speech to get your attention.

I can only suggest that another reason fiction writers use names even in written speech is simply to aid the reader as to the flow of dialogue.

I think some of it is when you use a name you do personalise the conversation; in a conversation about facts (e.g. maths, programming) this is usually irrelevant except when you need to direct dialogue at a specific person. Personalising can otherwise be good though, which is perhaps why salespeople use it (although of course it then rings alarm bells in people who usually deal with facts).

Another interesting point is that I use nicknames for people I'm close to rather than their actual names, and usually just to gain their attention. Actual names seem too formal.

I've noticed it more amongst my friends and coworkers from the US, although also amongst British friends who are in Sales and Marketing or otherwise customer facing. I think it's just a Getting Along thing where you are expressing interest in the other person.

Some politicians, when interviewed, use the name of their interviewer. (I think; I rarely listen to interviews these days.)

1. Buys them time to think. *waffle waffle waffle*
2. Reminds the audience that the interviewer is human and may be biased against them.

3. Provides some context if the clip of them talking is played later.

I think the frequency with which someone uses the other person's name in that way is tightly correlated with their slime factor (cf estate agents, used car salesmen, double glazing salesmen...).

It's quite a patronising thing to do, really, Simon: it has undertones or implication that you should stop and listen to me because I know what I'm talking about whereas you are a mere pleb. Simon. :-)

The only time I use someone's name other than actively to get their attention is that I might say "Hi, Simon!" or "Bye then, Simon". I'm not sure why I do this; perhaps my slime factor has gone up as a result without me even realising! I *think* (but am far from sure) that it's something along the lines of "Hi, Simon" meaning "Hello person-of-my-acquaintance, I do know who you are, I'm just affirming that I haven't mistaken you for someone else".

On a vaguely related note, there's a woman who attends the congregation I do who has a habit of putting in "father" in the middle of sentences when praying in public.

It always seems rather odd and unnatural to me since, as you say, I find it unusual to keep adding the name of the person I'm addressing when I'm speaking.

Using names in written dialogue to keep track of who's saying what doesn't strike me as unlikely at all - I'm fairly sure it's true! It's so frustrating to read a long spiel of dialogue and have no idea who's speaking, and thus what's really going on... Using names more than in actual speech seems like a good solution. After all, written dialogue hardly ever accurately records the patterns of real speech, given how much we all um and er and never finish sentences.

Similarly, I think I might use people's names when speaking to them when the conversation is being conducted in a largeish group, particularly when it's quite lively and everyone's speaking across each other a bit. Again, it just makes it clearer whose ideas you're referring to.

I think you're right about the names/exasperation correlation, but that isn't the only one.

I think the , he said , Fred replied thing can get very tiring quickly. But if you have long bits of dialogue without them I think it can be pretty easy to get lost, particularly if it's of the kind with lots of iterruptions:

"I often wondered if...", Fred began.
"Don't you dare!"
"What?"
"If you..."
"Look, this situation is not just on."
"Hmm."
"No seriously I mean it."
"Let's just drop it."
"I never want to see you again".

so I think that might be why people drop names into sentences. It might be worth looking to see if conversations between characters of the same sex (which are more difficult to report because you can't use pronoun genderedness), use the name-in-speech thing more?

I often feel partonised if people use my name a lot, particularly in a professional context. It seems to ground what you're saying in the purely subjective, suggesting it's ideosyncratic.

"Experts" say that regularly using someones name while talking to them makes you come across as more sincere. When used on me, I find it makes the speaker sound disingenuous. It's as if they were only doing it as cheap way to appear sincere.

When someone is in the same room as me, I don't tend to think of them in terms of their name. When someone is introduced to me, it doesn't tend to register. They are the person just there with those characteristics. At one place I worked, I had the piss taken out of me for tending to ask who someone that was introduced to me was the moment they left the room. Subsequent places tend to have wheeled people in to be introduced (mostly due to the shit hitting the fan, coincidentally, just after employing me).

I think the things-vs-people idea might have some merit, but I also think that it's possible to argue that when someone stops making sense you may want to get their attention simply in order to make them think about what's coming out of their mouths. It's often the right way to get through to someone who's busy going off on one about $topic because it's prodded their emotionally-motivated assumptions about life in general.

One of the main reasons that I never use anyone's name at all ever if I can avoid it is precisely the embarrassment thing; since I both have an excellent forgettory for names and the family trait of using every possible name in sequence for someone until I get it right…

I also only really use names to get people's attention.

There have been many times when I've spent years meeting someone evry week, chatting away to them, know everything about them and have later realised that I have no idea what their names are.

There are positive aspects to using people's names in conversation with them; one of the most notable is that it makes it less likely that you'll forget what they're called! That said, the only time it has especially struck me was when I was working as a tech support monkey and one of my colleagues would tend to use the customer's name several times every call; I ascribed it initially to his Moroccan background, and some cultural conventions for of negotiating in the Medina, but later I learned that his background was sales, and given the other answers here, that's probably where it came from.

s/cultural conventions for of/wider cultural conventions for/ works a bit better there.

I've found this as well. As kaet said - I also think they use names in a written dialogue to keep track of who is saying what as much as anything. I'll tend to do the Hi Simon, Bye Simon thing but not use names directly much and I often use nicks when I havent been asked not to since it seems more friendly and less formal. I think thats a follow-on from me liking being called grue. I really dont like Sue but I've learnt not to introduce myself by what I prefer and it's better than Susan which I *hate*. So I kind of like the not using names thing particularly with boyfriend who I've known for years, has always known me as Sue and it'd be strange for me to ask him to change what he calls me if that whole ramble makes any sense.

Yes! I used to do that when I was little too, I couldn't say anybody's name even to get their attention. It just felt wrong and embarrassing.

I think the reason writers do it is so the reader remembers who's talking to whom. When you're watching a real conversation you keep seeing the people in it all the time, but when you're reading a book your mental image of the characters isn't being constantly refreshed by the fact that you're looking at them; when you read their name, their invented faces come into view again. Isaac Asimov doesn't seem to do this as often as some authors, and coupled with the part where all his characters are very similar in personality, this is why I can't read his books without losing track very fast. I still ought to draw a comic book and then read that.

Sorry, graphic novel. Considering somebody's already asked me to draw part of one I ought to remember the distinction...

As others have said, I think this is indeed a convention in fiction. Jasper Fforde lampoons it neatly in one of his books (I think "The Well of Lost Plots", but I haven't checked), with a sequence in which somebody is able to tell the difference between "real" people who've entered fiction and people native to fictional worlds by engaging in a sequence of dialogue in which no names are mentioned and watching the book-people getting horribly confused.

Using names too much is a traditional error of new fiction writers -- I find myself doing it. Conversely, it seems eminently reasonable that there's a convention in fiction to use names more than natural to as you say, make it clear who's speaking to whom.

They may have a dialect which does this, but I think it's too widespread for that to the be the main cause. I don't know if they're subconsciously trying to copy what other writers do, or to make it clear who's speaking, or something else, possibly thinking too much about the characters without visualising them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The thing is, Fred…

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject