Popular Culture and Language Etiquette: The Use of Formal and Informal ‘you’ as Address Forms in Selected Russian and Hungarian Films
Address forms, as key expressions of politeness, are used in all cultures. They are well displayed in films which exhibit different societies at different times in many cases, and are becoming one of the biggest agents of popular culture, giving great opportunities for their use in sociolinguistic studies. This paper examines the socio-cultural aspects of the use of formal and informal ‘you’ as address forms through films in Hungarian and Russian languages. It explores the main similarities and differences between the studied societies in terms of the use of “Tu-vous” forms (Brown & Gilman, 1975).
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