|
Father
18
19
Mother
24
24
Children
0
24
Includes the kin titles
son, fella, lad(s),
children, baby, boy(s)
In SettCorp the use of kin titles is confined to
mam
and
dad
and at no stage are they
used to refer to the children (consistent with Wilson and Zeitlyn, 1995; Biber
et al
.,
1999). However, TravCorp yields a much wider selection including
dad
,
daddy
,
mam
,
mammy
,
mamma
,
son
,
baby son
,
boy(s)
and
children
. The presence of child-
specific kin titles downplays the value of autonomy evident in a full first name and
instead places the emphasis on belonging and interdependence. This pragmatic
variation between the two families is evidence of the influence of the macro-social
factor of
ethnicity
. The data appears to suggest a reciprocal system of kin titles in the
Traveller family which clearly indicates the presence of the family at the core of the
Traveller value system. This Traveller
kinship system
is constructed around a family
and extended family CofP and in this
kinship culture
the importance of the family
unit, and your position in it, is reinforced by the use of these kin titles. On the other
hand, the full first name is the most common vocative in SettCorp where there are no
kin titles used to refer to the children. This shows that the settled community
possibly place more value on the child’s individuality and, indeed, Blum-Kulka
(1997a) has demonstrated a similar pattern in contrasting naming practices in
Jewish-American and American-Israeli families.
187
The use of kin titles also provides an illustration of McDonagh’s (2000) argument
that, while settled people organise themselves in parishes and districts, Travellers
organise themselves in terms of families. In Irish culture, part of the establishment of
the identity of a member of the settled community depends heavily on
where
they
come from geographically, for example, Limerick or Dublin. In contrast, it could be
maintained that the Traveller family surname, for example Ward or Sherlock, plays a
more significant part than geographical location in determining a Traveller’s
identity. However, at this point it should be noted that this study is based on a
comparison of one family from each of the Traveller and settled communities and,
therefore, more research is necessary in the area in order to fully test the validity of
these claims.
This use of vocative forms also points towards differences in
socio-economic status
between the Traveller and settled families. As has already been discussed, the use of
the first name in its full form is commonly found across different speech situations.
Many of these are asymmetrical in nature, for example therapist-client, employer-
employee or teacher-student. The settled parents, in using the first name in its full
form when addressing their children are in essence ‘preparing’ their children for the
outside world where they will frequently encounter such speech situations.
Therefore, the gap for settled children between presenting themselves in private and
in public is not as great as the one that exists for Traveller children. Schatzman and
Strauss (1955 cited in Edwards, 1976: 104), in one of the first studies of its kind,
examined the difference between middle and working class speakers when moving
form private to public speech domains. They demonstrated that in narratives,
working class speakers, because of their relatively closed social networks assumed a
shared perspective too readily and made little allowance for their listener’s ignorance
of events, thereby resulting in often disjointed narratives. Coming from a
background where most talk was between people that knew each other very well,
working class speakers could not adjust to the absence of background knowledge as
easily as their middle class equivalents could. Bernstein (1972) describes working
class families as ‘positional’ type families which he claims have closed
communication systems and operate in the restricted code. On the other hand, he
ascribes more open communication systems to middle class, or ‘person oriented’
families which, he maintains, have more open communication systems, related to the
188
elaborated code. Similarly, Travellers, when moving from the relatively closed
family CofP to more person-orientated, open CofPs, experience difficulties because,
according to Bernstein (1972: 494), ‘changes in codes involve changes in role
relationships and procedures of social control.’
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