Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper comprises two case studies on the impact of using V versus T pronouns by multinational companies, the relevance of which is clearly framed within the context of previous research. By focusing on multinational companies and by including both industry type and country (for which the communication is meant) as variables, the first case study offers a valuable and original continuation of previous work cited by the authors, and so does the investigation of the impact of the use of V versus T pronouns on the addressees (case study 2). Both case studies have a solid design (although I would like more information on the age of the participants in case study 2, see below) and the methodological approach and data processing seem sound to me. The authors correctly expose the studies’ flaws, especially with respect to the 2nd case study, where the fact that participants were familiar with the companies involved clearly seems to be an interfering factor that most probably (and unfortunately) had a major effect on the results (see below). 

 

Still I do have some critical remarks and suggestions:

 

- I think the authors should make the link between case study 1 and case study 2 more explicit. An interesting finding of case study 1 is that conservative industries like construction are more inclined to use V pronouns. But then the second case study does not seem to go on with that distinction between conservative and non-conservative industries, since in case study 2 the label 'conservative' has been exchanged for 'competent'. But the reader is left to wonder: what is the link between conservative and competent? These can hardly be considered equivalents (see line 394, by the way, there is a spelling mistake there in the Dutch phrase: it says  'conversatief' instead of 'conservatief'.

 

-With respect to the findings for the Belgian Dutch data in case study 1 (p. 7): The fact that no clear link between industry and pronoun use is detected and that almost every industry shows a predominant use of T-pronouns in my view should be explained from the perspective of the ambiguous relation of Flanders with the standard language (that has been adopted from the Netherlands). The standard Dutch T-forms are experienced as quite formal in Belgian Dutch, because they are exogenous for most Flemings (who do not use them in their colloquial language) and thus strongly associated with standard language and standard language is what they only use in formal or institutional settings  (see PhD dissertation Sarah Van Hoof (Feiten en fictie: een sociolinguïstische analyse van het taalgebruik in fictieseries op de Vlaamse openbare omroep (1977-2012)), in chapter 6 the link between standard languages ‘institutional voices’ is clearly established there, see also PhD dissertation Benny De Decker (2014: 104) which shows that Flemish youngsters predominantly use the endogenous ge-pronoun (especially those from the Antwerp region who nearly exclusively do so) when chatting with friends, see finally also Vandekerckhove 2005 which shows that Flemings have not assimilated the informal Dutch standard pronoun). For many Flemings ‘je’ and even more so ‘jij’ are marked forms that belong to a standard register that is not theirs (‘je’ is endogenous in the peripheral western dialects, but ‘jij’ is exogenous for all Flemings).

 

-case study 2:

With respect to the seven informants who had to indicate their familiarity with the companies etc.: What was the profile of these informants in terms of age, gender and socio-economic background? Why were these seven considered a representative or relevant group?

 

-table 1: example for informal T-use: Why does the message only contain the full (accented) variants? This sounds rather unnatural, since there is no need to stress the pronoun, especially not the possessive pronoun (you can only develop your own skills, not those of someone else). I think this choice should be justified because it is not the most obvious one and it might have an impact on acceptability judgments.

 

-line 378: something is missing there

 

-4.1.3: I would add percentages with respect to the gender distribution within the pool of participants. Furthermore, in view of the average age: most participants must have been young adults. When discussing the results, a reference is often made to ‘older participants’. How many ‘older participants’ were included in the design?  And from what age onwards are participants considered old? 

 

-4.2.3: With respect to the results for salary expectations: the authors find an interaction of condition (T vs V) with competence.. Do they see any possible argument for explaining why no interaction of condition (T vs. V) with excitement has been found?

 

-Strikingly in case study 2, no differences in attitudes with respect to the companies were found depending on whether companies used T or V pronouns: Clearly the fact that the participants had preexisting ideas about the given companies is a major factor here. As pointed out in the discussion, it indeed would have been a better idea to work with fictitious companies, because the familiarity of the companies most probably has overruled any potential impact of the use of specific address forms. Apart from that, we have been witnessing a general societal (and linguistic) informalization in the past few decades (see Coupland & Kristiansen 2011). This could also be an explanatory factor, especially since most participants belong to a younger age category: could it be that selecting a V or a T pronoun is not much of an issue anymore, or at least not in this type of context, with (young) people who do have preexisting ideas about the given companies.

Coupland, N. & T. Kristiansen (2011). ‘SLICE: Critical perspectives on language (de)standardisation’. In: Kristiansen, T. & N. Coupland (red.), Standard languages and language standards in a changing Europe. Oslo: Novus Press, 11-35.

 

-lines 497-498: “When addressed by a high competence company, this feeling of distance may be undesirable to the participant.”: But is this a reason for lower salary expectations?  Why would a company that is rated highly competent be assumed to pay lower salaries when using V pronouns than when using T pronouns? This seems like an ad hoc explanation that is hard to substantiate. Could (again) the individual and apparently well-known profile of the companies be an interfering factor here? Could it be that V pronouns are deemed 'more' incompatible with the specific image people associate with particular companies and could this be related to the type of products these companies are associated with (see the factor industry culture which was found to be relevant in case study 1)?  Or could (as suggested above) the general societal (and linguistic) informalization lead to V pronouns being deemed preferable in an ever-decreasing number of contexts? 

 

-line 508: It is pointed out that it is surprising that T did not lead to more positive attitudes overall: Wouldn't you expect more positive results if the less conspicuous weak forms were use (so 'je' instead of 'jij'/'jou(w)')? I’d like some reflection on this.

 

-lines 509-510: I think the authors rightly point out that a low degree of involvement from the part of the addressees might have been a determinant (alongside other factors).

 

-With respect to the final line of the article: “Practically, our studies show that companies should carefully consider which pronoun of address to use to achieve their communicative goals.”: You could also have concluded the reverse, based on case study 2: it does not matter that much as long as the company/brand is well-known!  So I do not really subscribe to that conclusion in the given form, since it does not seem to logically follow from case study 2.

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

The author of this manuscript makes the case that variables mentioned in the literature for T/V-selection in personal communication might not hold for professional communication. In turn, the author states that more attention is needed for the branch of industry a company belongs to and aims to investigate this cross-linguistically, further aiming to assess the effect of T/V selection on addressees. The author clearly justifies why parameters mentioned previously in the literature might not apply to professional communication, and it is good to see attention devoted to the topic.

 

The RQs for the two studies are clear from the start and are clearly in line with the goals of the SI. The methodology is described succinctly but in sufficient detail; the author succeeds in presenting the design of the two studies lucidly. The choices are generally well-justified.

 

The model/framework presented in Section 5 can inspire follow-up research and likely is the strongest contribution of this study. As the authors state on p.13: “While there are frameworks for explaining the choice between V and T for individual speakers, no such framework exists yet for V and T in organizational communication”, which to me nicely captures the gap this study aims to address. I do have some more critical comments in light of this.

 

Comment 1 - It is surprising that obtaining such a model/framework for V and T in organizational communication is not clearly pitched as the main goal of this study in the introduction. Emphasizing that the author wishes to derive such a model/framework bottom-up and empirically can help justify the overall exploratory nature of your studies. Neither of the two studies include any clear hypotheses on the types of differences the author might expect to find between companies, industries or languages, and why. Because of this, the discussion sections of the two studies come across as fairly speculative and superficial.

 

As I assume that this is in essence an exploratory paper and that no theory-driven hypotheses underly the research questions, it could benefit the paper to more clearly present this study as exploratory from the start, and to mention the main goal more explicitly: to obtain a preliminary evidence-based framework for V and T in organizational communication that can inspire a new research line.

 

Comment 2 - Study 1 and Study 2 are similar in their focus on recruitment genres, but do zoom in on quite different types of recruitment-oriented communication (“About us” for Study 1 and “job advertising” for Study 2).

2.1 - This clear focus does not really align with the ambitious formulation of the research goal (T/V in “organizational communication”) and the encompassing literature review on T/V research in all sorts of organizational genres.

2.2 - On the other hand, it is perhaps surprising that findings from earlier research on the importance of language use and language variation in job advertising in general (e.g. van Meurs) are not used to justify the choice for recruitment-related communication.

2.3 - Further, the general discussion section could do with some attention to the differences in the genres included in Study 1 and Study 2 and the implications of this for the proposed model.

2.3 - Generally, it might not hurt to tone down claims on the extent to which you can generalize your findings to other types of corporate communication.

 

Comment 3 - The introduction pays quite some attention to the potential importance of differences between languages in their preference for T/V.  

3.1 - Yet, there is no clear justification for the selection of languages in Study 1, nor is this selection critically assessed in the (general) discussion section.

3.2 - Given this emphasis on the importance of cross-linguistics differences in T/V selection, it is fairly unexpected and perhaps also a bit unfortunate to find that Study 2 only targets speakers of Dutch. The authors could at least provide some type of justification on why they only focus on speakers of Dutch. Again, they might also wish to emphasize the provisional nature of their model in light of this.

 

Comment 4 - Some factors mentioned in the model are included in the studies presented in this paper, but are not given much attention. For instance, on p.13, line 538-539, we read: “Addressee characteristics such as age have been found to play a role in the choice for and effect of V vs. T (e.g., van Zalk and Jansen 2004; Hidri Neys 2021).” In Study 2, there is a significant effect of age, but no interaction with T/V. This is not discussed.

 

To conclude, I see value in this study’s attempt to draw attention to T/V selection in organizations, which makes the study well-suited for this special issue. The main contribution of this study to me lies in its preliminary evidence-based model of T/V selection in recruitment. Overall, I do believe the paper can benefit from

> emphasizing from the start that the authors wish to propose such a model and that this paper hence presents exploratory bottom-up empirical research 

> making it clearer how the two studies contribute to this goal

> pinpointing more clearly what next steps are needed to test, validate and fine-tune the model

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an excellent article on the use of address forms in Dutch, French, German and Spanish. It is well written, has a coherent structure and brings new insight to the study of address forms. It also has relevance for a wider audience. The introduction sets out the research questions clearly and explains the structure of the article. There is a good theoretical section and a sound explanation of the methodology. Results are clearly and succinctly described, and the discussion is persuasive and supported by the findings and the wider literature. The conclusion proposes a framework for address by (corporate) organistions which will be a useful starting point for future research and indicates the novelty value of the article.

The main point for improvement I wish to put forward concerns the languages involved, specifically the differentiation between Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch needs to be clearly motivated. Dutch is of course a pluricentric language, but so are French, German and Spanish. Readers will want to know why the authors chose specifically to look into differences between this one pluricentric language. This will also afford the authors the opportunity to hypothesise about organistional address in other pluricentric languages.

Three further points to note about Dutch in this article:

1. the label 'Belgian' in Figure 1 seems inappropriate. 'Flemish' may be more appropriate, or use another label, e.g. 'Dutch NL/B';
2. section 4 needs to indicate clearly whether the Dutch participants were Netherlandic or Belgian Dutch, or both, and explain this;
3. the choice for the masculine 3rd person pronoun in the last example in Table 1 is bound to elicit discussion, so it may be wise to clarify why this specific form was chosen.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English is of a high standard, but I would still advise some editing by a (near) native specialist. A few specific issues:

- in line 125 (2nd paragraph of section 2, line 8), please change 'the example questions' to 'Clyne et al.'s example questions';
- in line 194 (towards the bottom of p. 4), delete 'While Schoenmaker et al.'
- (this concerns Dutch, not English) in line 394 (section 4.1.4, p. 10) check the spelling of conservatief.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf