Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- To the reader
- Introduction
- Gestures & Signals
- Customs & Behaviours
- Names & Addresses
- What's so good about it? the curious nature of ‘good-’ greetings
- Ahoy, ahoy! Pick up the phone! ‘hello’ and its uses
- The unlucky Mr Szczęściarz: foreign names in foreign places
- Wang is King in China: too many people, not enough names
- Finding Björk: Icelandic names
- Yoo-hoo! Who? You! how Swedes don't address each other
- Mister Doctor: titles of medicos, surgeons and barbers
- I forget my name: loss of first name by marriage
- When your coz is your sis: kinship terms
- You, thou and other politenesses: familiar and polite ‘you’
- Include me out! dual, trial and other grammatical curiosities
- For me to know and you to find out: naming and name taboos
- Bye-bye! how things have changed
- Postscript
- Notes
- Sources
- Index
Bye-bye! how things have changed
from Names & Addresses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- To the reader
- Introduction
- Gestures & Signals
- Customs & Behaviours
- Names & Addresses
- What's so good about it? the curious nature of ‘good-’ greetings
- Ahoy, ahoy! Pick up the phone! ‘hello’ and its uses
- The unlucky Mr Szczęściarz: foreign names in foreign places
- Wang is King in China: too many people, not enough names
- Finding Björk: Icelandic names
- Yoo-hoo! Who? You! how Swedes don't address each other
- Mister Doctor: titles of medicos, surgeons and barbers
- I forget my name: loss of first name by marriage
- When your coz is your sis: kinship terms
- You, thou and other politenesses: familiar and polite ‘you’
- Include me out! dual, trial and other grammatical curiosities
- For me to know and you to find out: naming and name taboos
- Bye-bye! how things have changed
- Postscript
- Notes
- Sources
- Index
Summary
Languages develop, customs change, and the way we perceive and interpret things drift. This last farewelling chapter deals with that commonest of phrases, ‘bye-bye’, and how it has changed status in just a few decades.
Nowadays, ‘bye-bye’ is a throw-away phrase, used many times every day by English speakers and others alike. It has become as ubiquitous and natural (and neutral) as ‘OK’.
But not so in 1959. According to the sociologist Sandor Feldman, a woman saying ‘bye-bye’ to a man indicated a much greater closeness than a straight ‘goodbye’. It had even seductive overtones: the woman wanted to make clear that she wished to meet again, and the phrase was suggestive of more things to come.
Feldman must have viewed the simple ‘bye-bye’ with great suspicion. As a lovely, loving, perhaps lustful farewell, he gets the last quote in this book:
Women, particularly young ones, use the ‘bye-bye’ when parting from men with whom they do not but wish to have a close relationship. They think, by using the phrase, that men may accept the familiarity graciously. Sometimes, however, the person to whom the ‘bye-bye’ is addressed finds the phrase irritating because he is uncertain whether he should allow himself to be trapped by the ‘bye-bye’ or whether he should maintain his authority and stick to the ‘good-bye’, thus indicating to the woman that she is in no position to say ‘bye-bye’ which means more closeness.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Tales of Hi and ByeGreeting and Parting Rituals Around the World, pp. 214 - 215Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009