Personal reference in English

Personal reference is the use of an expression to pick out a person, as in When did John eat the cookies? or Tell Dr. Elwood that I need to see him . This article explores the social factors involved in how speakers choose a referring expression in a given situation. Five experiments were conducted which presented speakers with scenarios and asked them how they would refer to a particular person in that situation. The results showed that speakers were sensitive to the level of intimacy between the speaker and referent, between the addressee and referent, and between a nonparticipating audience and the referent. To a lesser degree, the relation between the speaker and the addressee also influenced choice of referring expression. The results can be explained by a theory that posits that speakers are attempting to preserve their faces and the faces of their addressees in choosing these terms, and so they avoid references that could be face threatening. This theory can be integrated with current theories of object reference and the choice of address terms. (Reference, address, politeness, personal reference)