| This dissertation is a description and analysis of the address system of the Muslim Kano Hausa community. Five forms are considered as terms of address between addresser-addressee and an audience. They are names, pronouns, titles, kin terms and epithets. The primary function of each item has been described as: identifying individuals, identifying participants in communication, social group identification, identifying genealogical relations between a dyad and expressing the speaker's feeling toward his addressee, respectively. Secondly, each term can be used to show the social difference or relation between a speaker and his addressee. For instance, name avoidance could either indicate that the addressee is the husband, the first child, one of the parents or their namesakes, the religious teacher, or head of the family of the addresser. Use of the third person pronoun ya, of a title for third person, e.g., Sarki, Malam, Alhaji, or the impersonal pronoun a to address a second person in Hausa shows ultimate respect. Epithets are used as address terms in three ways: favorably, unfavorably, or neutrally.; The naming system of the Muslim Kano Hausa has changed drastically over a period of 500 years. Islamic and Arabic traditional names replace the traditional Hausa names to a great extent. Though some non-Muslim names are still being used by both Muslim and Maguzawa Hausas, the former use them as sunan rana 'nickname' and the latter use them as sunan yanka 'personal name.'; Hausa society has been categorized into four classes: (1) rulers, (2) learned people, (3) wealthy people, and (4) ordinary people. There are certain terms used to address members of each institution. However, any term can be used by extension to address someone not included originally under the term.; The use of a linguistic sign as a term of address can indicate the speaker's, the addressee's, as well as the audience's social standing within the hierarchical Kano Hausa community. Finally, one of the assumptions of this dissertation has been that in order to understand any linguistic behavior or sign, as well as the non-linguistic ones associated with the Hausa terms of address, each term is best seen in its social context. It is clear that the main purpose for each address term is to attract attention and to keep the communication channel open. |
