Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Age difference

I've often had this thought, and tonight I thought I'd share it with you and ask for your views:

Do you find weird the fact that there are often big age differences between us, and yet we speak to each other in a quite informal way? Even when we hardly even know the person we're addressing?

I'm 17. In RL, if I met someone more than 10 years older than me I'd never met before, I'd put 'Mr.' or 'Ms.' before addressing them, I'd use plural forms (I know this doesn't happen in English, but you may be familiar with it from French).
On the other hand, if someone more than 10 years older than me posted on these boards for the first time, I'd just say something like 'Welcome, Mary/John/whatever! Have fun!' No formalities at all.

I'm not really feeling bad about it; it seems to be the norm around here. But, when you think about it, it is strange.

Any thoughts?

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

P.S.: I'll probably see your posts on Monday, but keep them coming, by all means!

I don't find it weird at all, but maybe that's because that's our culture here in Brazil, most of us are always informal, we call EVERYONE by their 1st name, from our siblings and best friends to old people we've never seen before and the most important people in the country, so yeah, the same way I talk to everyone here online I talk to my friends and my teachers and the people I've never met at the bus stop lol

Things tend to be quite informal here in Canada, also. I deal with all different ages of people and it's rare that anyone wants me to call him/her Mr./Mrs./Ms.

And when someone calls me Mrs, I feel quite old! I don't like it.

Irene

Most of the US is basically the same way, although I know in parts of the south things are still pretty formal. I think it's just custom for most of us to be fairly informal in RL most of the time, so we carry that over to the message boards.

~Anna

Yep. I live in Indiana, and there are debates as to whether I actually have an accent, but I'm from SC and am still very much a Southern boy at heart. I'll tend to use "sir" and "ma'am" with people in positions of respect. (My sweetheart's grandfather, after meeting me for the first time, closed our conversation by saying, "And my name is 'Art', not 'sir'.")

But on this board, and in most online situations, we approach things from a stance of equality. Or rather, the respect is judged by what is shown rather than what is seen. Anyone who's 80 years old is going to get a "sir" or "ma'am" from me regardless, in person. On here, I don't know anyone's age without looking -- those terms would come out with someone who is obviously an expert in their field and has impressed me with being light-years beyond my own understanding of something. They will not, regardless of age, in casual conversation.

That's actually one of the things that first got me hooked on electronic communication. Growing up, I was (to be immodest) significantly more mature than my age would indicate, in most respects. Online, I was given respect with regard to the maturity I showed, not the age that was seen.

I agree with BanAnna. Since we're faceless on the boards, we're equal and ageless:p. Some of us may tell our ages, others may not. So we dispense with formalities in name and in pronouns, and address each other as friends.

We don't judge surface appearances; rather, we address each other politely because we share a common interest and we respect each other's intelligences.

And I suspect that we pick up on the informality of many of the cultures that are represented on these boards.

All in all, it's a nice place to be.

gerry

No, can't say that I ever have given it a thought - it's always just been part of the way the internet works. More often than not, you have no idea what age someone you're talking to is and no way to tell. So you tend to automatically approach everyone as though they are on a par with you.

LabRat

I have thought about it before, and I find it a little weird.

Even at uni, where my professors prefer I call them by their first names, I can't do it. I can just see my mother glaring at me if I even think about it. So I put abbreviations before their names i.e. I call one of my professors 'Doc Bill'. He seems to get a kick out of it too.

But the internet is a different medium, one with its own set of rules and guidlines. I'm glad for it, in a way, because I've made some friends who I never would have made otherwise. Nothing wrong with bridging the age gap

Even though I just turned 25, I'm still having trouble thinking of myself as a "grown-up." Although I have found that in my current job, I've had no problems calling my coworkers and even my supervisor by their first names. In a job I had a few years ago, it was *so* hard to call my supervisor by his first name, even though he'd asked me to.

One custom I find an interesting (American) regional difference in. I live in Maryland, which tends to be a mix of South and Yankee customs. People I know who were born and raised here or south of here like the custom of children calling an adult they are close to "Mr." or "Miss" and then first name (regardless of marital status). For instance, when I was growing up, my next-door neighbor was Miss Sue, not Mrs. Lastname. However, people who are transplants to Maryland *hate* this custom with a vengeance. "Miss" can *only* refer to a married woman! Etc. I think we've had the discussion on the boards before, as well.

Thank you for your thoughts, FoLCs, and for the usual info on your cultures

This kind of formality didn't really exist in Greece until 1800 (I think that's about the date), when the Greek people living in the cities started being influenced by the other Europeans and picked up some of their most 'chic'-looking features, such as the 'courtesy plural' from French. (Even today, you hardly find courtesy plural in villages.) So this fact made me expect the 'formal' way of addressing people was the common one in other cultures.
On the other hand, other from LabRat (who hasn't spoken about her country's norm), I see no posts from Europeans. So maybe it's a Europe thing? (Not that I mind being wrong about this impression I had; I'm just curious.)

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Not so much in the UK... apart from perhaps the older generation. I'm 26 and on first name terms with most of the people I meet personally (letter writing is a bit different, but hey, who does that any more?! )

There's a few older people that I only use their title and last name, but they're at least in their 60s if not older. So it's more a generation thing rather than a social status thing.

Unlike some parts of the US, we don't use Sir and Miss to address people, unless they're teachers.

My greatest confusion was when I was living and teaching in Poland, they still have fairly structured rules of address. The English equivalent would be something like:

Very Formal: Mr Johnathan Smith
Formal: Mr Johnathan
Informal: Johnathan
Very Informal: John

I think I've got that right, any Polish lurkers are welcome to correct me. Certainly, you'd never use Mr Smith like you would in the UK.

I could never figure out quite how I should address the Principal, my fellow teachers or my students, some of whom where adults and were older than me. And there were times when it all got too confusing for my own good, like the time I had to send a kid to see the Principal because he was misbehaving, and I couldn't think how I should to refer to her...

As a little note, my random fact for the day... I've been told that 'thee/thou/thy/thine' were once the informal form of 'you' in English (As in "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate..." and so on). This has mostly become obsolete, although you occasionally still find it used in some places in the UK, like Yorkshire.

Helga

I think this is harder when you're younger - say, under 18. I remember feeling uncomfortable when calling some people who were older than me by their first names. These days, however, it's a non-issue for me. I address everyone I know by their first name, no matter what their status or age - and that's pretty usual in the UK (in my experience). In business, everyone is also on first name terms, no matter how well you know the other party.

Outside of work, I'd use surnames for people I don't know. For example, if I ever met Dean Cain, I'd feel awkward calling him anything other than Mr Cain. Tony Blair would be Mr Blair. And so on.

On a side note, I've noticed that, because everyone in my choir knew Sir Andrew Davis (he's a conductor) before he got his knighthood, we all call him just plain old Andrew. If he'd begun conducting us *after* he'd got his knighthood, I'm sure we'd all be calling him Sir Andrew.

Yvonne

Well, generally speaking, when children, we'd refer to adults as Mrs Carmichael or Mr. Anderson. Don't ask me whether that holds true today - don't have kids of my own. As adults, we tend to use first names if we know the person well and a person's full name, sans any formal identifier, if we don't - "I saw Sandra Jackson when I was out".

Haven't noticed that my nieces (8 and 12) are any different, although they are more informal about addressing family members than we were, back in the day. I'd never think of calling my Aunt Margaret anything but that, when I was young. But our nieces have always been encouraged to call aunts, uncles etc by their first names. Which doesn't really bother us that much. Whether that's the norm, or just a peculiarity of our family, I haven't a clue. I do think that children these days are generally less formal with this kind of thing.

One weird thing - I now live back in my childhood home, inherited from my parents. The same neighbours I addressed back in the sixties and seventies as a child as Mr Carmichael or Mrs. McGuinness are now Alex and Anne-Marie, now that we're adults living next door. This same elderly man I discuss gardening with over the fence, I can recall being the same one who used to work for a printers and hand over bundles of comics for my brother and I over that self-same fence. Which does seem very, very odd now and then.

Not even going to touch what I'd call Tony Blair.

LabRat

I think I've always called adults, excluding teachers, by their first names. From my friends' grandmother (who went by Nan), from my dad's employees, to the older folk down the street I remember talking to a lot, it was usually by first name.

When dealing with my family, I've found myself dropping the aunt/uncle when dealing with my parents' siblings, but mostly in thought or conversation about them. And sometimes calling my mom by her first name, but that's usually only at the family reunion. If you say Mom, you'll have about 15 women look. But if you say Terri, you'll get the right person. At the family reunion is also when I drop my mom's siblings honorifics when talking to/about them, but there's 50+ people at those, of 4 different generations. It's easier.

I generally *always* call people who are older than me by Miss/Ms./Mr./Mrs./Dr. or whatever. I have a hard time calling *anyone* who is older than I am by their first names. I am not sure why, though!

When I was a child, my neighbors across the street called my parents Miss Mary and Mr. Dave, but it kind of bothered me, and I could never call their parents anything other than Mr. and Mrs. Dukowski! It also really irritates me that a lot of my fellow grad students call professors by their first names -- I feel like they shouldn't be allowed to do that until they also have a Ph.D. after their names!

Thanks for the replies, FoLCs! They're really interesting to read

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

I'm not really sure there's a rule here. In French we have the plural form when we want to be formal, but then being formal is not as mandatory as it was 20 years ago.

For example, when I was a kid, I would always call my teacher Mrs Bonnet or Mr Joubert, and as far as I remember I'd use the plural form with them. Everybody did. These days, kids call me by my first name and use the informal singular form with me. They do because I asked them to. Before this year, I was teaching in a countryside school where kids just couldn't manage to be formal with us, and so it made sense for me to expect the same from my pupils here, especially as it makes me feel very old when they call me Mrs Whatevermynameis. But a couple of parents expressed surprise and even a bit of shock when they realised that kids didn't use the plural form with me.

Have to say I was a bit taken aback at first last year, when I spent a month teaching in Manchester and my tutoring teacher asked the kids to call me Mrs Whatevermynameis instead of my first name.

However, among teachers, whether it's in the UK or in France, we call each other by our first name. In French there's even a tacit rule saying that we have to keep using the informal singular form among teachers, regardless of the age difference. Same when you're part of the same political party or the same union.

I think that in it really depends on the individual person, though. My friend Maud has the hardest time in the world being informal, whereas I have the hardest time in the world being formal. For example, she still uses the formal plural when she talks to my parents, whereas I'm completely informal with hers.

Sometimes it can be an issue, too. Last year, I had a teaching practice at an infant school, and in infant schools there's the teacher, and another person (not a teacher) who helps out with the kids and the activities. The teacher I was replacing had a very complicated relationship with the woman working with her in the classroom, which had all started because she'd refused to go informal with her as they didn't have the same status and she wanted to maintain some distance. I couldn't see myself be formal with a person I worked with for 6 to 7 hours a day, and so I was informal with her and we had a fantastic working relationship. Other times, though, it can be the opposite, and maybe someday I'll end up meeting people who will be truly shocked if I try to be informal with them. Oh well.

Anyway, sorry for rambling on.

Kaethel

Oriental people (that includes ethnic Chinese, Korean and Japanese people) are very particular about addressing elders. It comes with the entire mindset about having to respect people older than you. It is never acceptable to call an adult, or somebody who is of an older generation, or somebody of a senior position than you by his/her first name. It is considered to be very rude, and you'll very likely be critisised. Worse still, your parents could also be critisised for not having taught you manners.

I'll always use adults' surnames when addressing them. That is, Mr or Miss or Mrs So-and-so. If the situation calls for less formality, eg if that adult is a friend of your parents and you've known the person for some time, it becomes acceptable to use his/her first name, But, you'll still have to prefix it with 'Uncle' or 'Auntie'. That is, Uncle So-and-so, or Auntie this-and-that. Though the adult is not related to me at all, by calling them uncles and aunties I express familiarity, yet respect at the same time. As I've said, it is never acceptable to use their first names.

I found Karen's point about using first names at family reunions interesting, because such a situation would never happen in a Chinese family. We don't have a generic term when refering to our parents' brothers (uncles) and sisters (aunties).

For example:
I'll call father's older brothers 'Bo Bo', but my father's younger brothers 'Shu Shu'. In addition, I'll have to call them by number, depending on age. Let's say my father has 3 older brothers, and I'm trying to talk to the 2nd eldest uncle. I'll call him "2nd Bo Bo".

What I call my uncles and aunties will depend on a number of factors, such as if they are older or younger than my parents, if they are my parents' brothers/sisters or if they are my parents' brothers/sisters- in-law. It'd also matter whether I'm referring to my paternal or maternal uncles/aunties.

Because we have such specific terms when addressing family members, there's never a confusion as to who you are trying to call.

I'm with Laura here; I have a hard time calling adults or people in senior positions by their first names. It just seems weird and unrespectful to me.

Over at the boards, I don't see you all physically, just the words you type. Hence, it's still possible for me to address you all by your first names (I have this illusion that everybody here is my age).

Now, if I were to meet... say... Wendy in person, I'll be addressing her as Ms Richards respectively. Unless she'd prefer the more familliar 'Auntie (Wendy or Richards)'. Then again, I won't feel strange calling her 'auntie' but she may find it awkward.

I think this is a whole evolving process. To me, calling someone Mr/Ms Whatever is a sign of respect. We've got some friends whose three-year-old calls me "Pam" and I'm not entirely comfortable with that, although I haven't been uncomfortable enough to complain. When I was little, I called my mom's friends "Mrs. Lastname." These days, I really like the Southern custom of calling older women "Miss Firstname" -- my daughter calls her Sunday School teachers "Miss Cindy" and "Miss Luz". My best friend is "Aunt Chris" to the kids. At school, OTOH, they have "Miss Hughes" and "Mrs. Lambert."

The common theme through this, I think, is "kids." At some point, kids grow up to be more-or-less on equal ground with other adults. I know we've got some teenagers around here, but y'all seem mature enough to merit first-name treatment. (If any of you are three years old, however, I'm "Mrs. Jernigan" to you )

Oh, and metwin? If you met Wendy, you might have to call her "Dr. Richards"

PJ

Fascinating!

At my family reunion, if you called 'Margaret', every single woman in the room would turn around. However, if you called Mum, *your* Mum would turn around because she'd recognise the plaintiff bleating of her own offspring.

Pam, I think you're right. Informality comes with age - although my Auntie Margaret specifically had to ask us to stop calling her Auntie because she said it made her feel old to have twenty-somethings and older calling her Auntie <g>.

And on another side note, I remember when my nieces were little, they'd call their parents by their first names rather than Mum and Dad. I think this was because their parents referred to each other using their first names, whether in front of the kids or not, so my nieces quite logically assumed that's what *they* were supposed to call them too. I noticed that when they began school, all of a sudden it was Mummy and Daddy - presumably because that's what the other kids called *their* parents.

Yvonne

Think you've hit the nail square on the head there, Pam.

LabRat (yes, it's a 'me too' post - so sue me. )

I agree with everyone who says that informality comes with age. But I do notice regional/cultural differences, and differences along the lines of status.

Taking status first, I took my degrees at Ireland's oldest university, Trinity College Dublin, which is considered to be on a par with Oxford and Cambridge (it's the only other university whose degrees Oxbridge considers equivalent to its own. Snooty or what? ). Anyway, all lecturers had to be addressed as Dr, Professor, Mr, Ms (as their appropriate title may be). There was no informality permitted between students and academics. If academics bothered to know the name of a student, they would usually use first names, but I was persistently called 'Miss Richards' (never Ms) by a couple of older academics. It was quite a rite of passage when one lecturer, who'd become a sort of mentor to me in my last two years - and went on to become my PhD supervisor - told me after I'd graduated from my first degree to use his first name. (I'll add that it took me a further two years to call him anything at all, because I felt so uncomfortable about using his first name and he frowned if I called him Dr Surname :p ).

Then I moved to the UK to teach at Keele University, where informality is the custom. All students call academics by their first names. Most students take to it very easily but, as Metwin1 says, students from the Far East did not - they almost all refused to use first names alone and it was all we could do to stop them calling us Dr Richards, Mr Smith or whatever. So I got very used to being Mrs Wendy (they didn't seem to understand that many women prefer Ms, and the idea that I had a PhD didn't quite seem to enter their thinking ). I also had a British mature student just out of the army after 24 years; he found the informality extremely difficult to take, so other than when we were talking alone in my office, for example, I was 'Doc' or Dr Richards.

Now, the regional difference I've noticed since moving to Canada is in dealing with people I haven't met before and arranging business over the phone. Say, making a dental appointment or ordering something to be delivered: the person on the other end of the line, having asked my name, will call me Wendy throughout the conversation, where in the UK I'd be used to being addressed formally. I hasten to add that it doesn't bother me in the slightest and that now I'm getting used to it I like it.

As for the original point of Anna's question - yes, the internet is the great leveller. I've chatted to many people without even having an idea of their ages, and in many cases ended up very surprised. I've met a 16-year-old FoLC and wouldn't for one second have expected her to address me as Dr Richards! But then, I don't expect the children of friends to address me formally either.


Wendy (who probably needs to start thinking about whether she expects her new niece to use 'Aunt' or not... )

Now that you mention university, Wendy...
I was very surprised to hear that over here, university professors who are addressing all the students in the class, use the word 'colleagues'. (I guess I was expecting something along the lines of 'ladies and gentlemen'.)

Off topic, is there a difference between pronouncing Miss and Ms?

See ya,
AnnaBtG. (who thinks she'd feel awkward calling Pam or Wendy with her first names if she met them in person, but would probably do it anyway.)

'Miss' is pronounced the same as in 'Clark will miss his superpowers terribly'. 'Ms' is pronounced 'mizz' to rhyme with 'fizz' - as in 'Dr Klein smiled happily when the contents of his flask began to fizz'.

Yvonne

I hear it more like 'Muz', with a very short Z sound... Not like 'Mizz Lilian' who I believe was Jimmy Carter's mother, but a much shorter sound altogether.


Wendy

Thanks, girls

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

It's largely a status issue to me -- purely on the context in which I know the person. Professors at school are Dr. So-and-so, because they're in a position of authority.

Someone with the same degree as those professors who rings the next position down from me in handbell choir, misses notes from time to time, and is frequently late? First-name basis.

That caused a slight problem at one point when I knew someone as "Randy" guy next to me in handbells, and "Randy" friend of my brother -- but then realized he was also "Dr. Collins" in my department. Thankfully, I didn't have to take a class from him -- calling most professors by their first name as an undergrad wouldn't go over well.

I have a question for the elders here. The impression that I'm getting is that while you'd like (or sometimes expect) kids to be more formal rather than simply using your first name, once the kid grows up and becomes a full-fleged adult it becomes acceptable for him/her to use your first name?

I suppose I find it a little odd. :p The fact is while he/she may have grown up, he/she is still of younger generation, which means he/she should show you respect accorded by your age/status. Am I making sense here?


metwin1

Yeah, I guess that's pretty much it. I do think, though, that I still respect my elders (probably not to the extent that you do); it just isn't expressed in what I call them. Does that make sense?

PJ

I'm with Yvonne on the pronounciation of Ms. At least, that's always the way I've heard it pronounced.

As for how kids address me - it really doesn't matter to me whether they're formal or not. I'm sure if we'd objected to my nieces calling us by our first names their parents would have made them address us more formally. But it never seemed to me to be an issue of importance. I'm more concerned with how they act and if they're well-behaved, really. Which they - generally <g> - are.

LabRat

In reply to
In the Western world the age difference versus an order of respect doesn't hold throughout life. Once you become an adult you are sort of absorbed into the great peloton of life. (So I've been watching the Tour de France!)
All adults are pretty much equal unless there is a familial or organizational difference. I think that is the same with the internet here. We are all assumed to be functioning adults until somebody proves they aren't by their comments.
Addresses are situational. The Admiral may be younger than you, but you address him as "Admiral Lastname" at work. Even if he is your father and you have the same Lastname, you call him Admiral in a work situation.
Assuming he isn't a relative, but also a rather close friend (not an acquaintance), when in informal social situations you can call him just plain Bill. If the Admiral is a woman, the same applies, but you call her "ma'am" instead of "sir".
Collegues of equal or similar rank use first names unless it is a formal situation.
One of the kicks I get with Stargate SG-1 is that they have that whole addressing folks thing right.

Artemis
BTW Anna, you are very adult. I wouldn't have guessed you were just 17.

This is an interesting topic. I am a professor in NY. Many of my students call me professor or Professor Christian but I ask them on the first day to call me Laura. Most of the students have no problem calling me by my first name.

I explain to them that while I have earned the title, to me, professor, is an old man with white hair and glasses. I don't like it much. I also don't like being called Aunt by nieces and Nephews that are in their 20's and 30's. My Aunts are all in their 80's and 90's! I don't like anything that gives me the title of (old fart) I hate Mame and Miss almost as much. It is really my own silly perception and I know it doesn't affect my colleagues or relatives in the same way.

I am Laura, no better or worse then anyone else. My age should not matter. I do have more experience in my subject then my students; however it does not make me a better human being, just a more experienced one.

My students are all adults; they all have their own stories. Some are older then me, most are younger. Some surf, golf, run, work, own businesses etc. I do none of those things<g>.
We are all just people! I am not a big fan of titles as you can see.

Other cultures do have different feelings and views on the matter, so I don't give them a hard time when they insist on calling me miss or professor. To them it is disrespectful to do otherwise. To show no disrespect to them I deal with it.

Laura