“Dude” and “Dudette”, “Bro” and “Sis”: A Diachronic Study of Four Address Terms in the TV Corpus

Abstract

This corpus linguistics study offers a diachronic perspective on masculine and feminine address terms by analyzing the frequencies of the pairs “dude”/”dudette” and “bro”/”sis” in the 325 million-word TV Corpus. Results show an increase of the frequency of “dude” and “bro”, a quasi-absence of “dudette”, and a stable but low frequency of “sis”. They suggest that “dude” and “bro” have taken on generic meanings, while the usage of “sis” remains kinship-specific. They also show that familiarizers are more frequent in American English than in British and Canadian English, and that their frequency in the TV Corpus is genre-dependent, with animated series and reality television shows being more conducive to their use.

Keywords

• corpus linguistics
• diachrony
• address terms
• gender