A sociolinguistic analysis of address terms in multinational mobile companies: a case study of MTN-CI

Abstract

Abstract: The present study examines address terms in phone conversations between the employees of MTN- CI and their customers. This research aimed at finding the types of address terms and the factors that impact on the use of address terms by the stakeholders. This paper refers to the theory by E. Chaika (1982) and R. Wardhaugh (2006). The writer resorts to sociolinguistic data elicitation technique by Labov (1972) to collect the data. This method consisted in recording the phone conversations between the customers and the employees of MTN-CI in its natural context of communication. Descriptive analysis method has been used to analyse the data. The result of this study indicates that there are two types of address terms used by the employees and the customers of MTN-CI. These types of address terms are title alone (T) and title plus family name (TFN). Also, the result indicates that the use of address terms are influenced by no sociolinguistic factors (sex, age, gender, social class). It is rather influenced by the reason of the call and power relationship between the stakeholders. Keywords: address terms, customers, employees, customer service, phone conversations