Semantic and Pragmatic Value of Norwegian Greetings the Last Hundred Years
Journal article, Peer reviewed
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Date
2017Metadata
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Original version
Maal og Minne. 2017, 1 145-172.Abstract
this article addresses changes in norwegian greeting rituals during the last
century seen from two viewpoints: First, an article in Maal og Minne
(lundeby 1995) against the answers to a questionnaire on greetings and
address forms conducted by Norwegian Ethnological Research (NEG) in 2008.
Secondly, the claims from the neg corpus are tested against a modern text
corpus with a wider age distribution. using linguistic theories from
semantics and pragmatics, the study finds that, with some exceptions, greetings
with a semantic content related to religious belief, situation, task and
time are replaced by greetings that are similar to primary interjections in that
they no longer carry descriptive meaning. Because of that, they function as
short, quick and context-free greetings to anyone, even to strangers, which
makes it questionable to what degree they increase relational intimacy as
claimed by lundeby. the new greetings are described as empty, superficial
and informal by the neg-informants; the reasons for this, however, are
thought to be their lack of the information, formality and tradition that the
older greetings possess.