Phraseology and Culture in English

2. Greeting formulae: Variation and significance 
Greeting routines and procedures are among the most widespread and tight-
ly structured conversational exchanges. According to Foley (1997: 256), 
“[g]reetings are used to establish social contact among interlocutors; as such, 
the kind of routines used to perform this ritual can be expected to vary 
along with different cultures’ understandings of social positions of any given 
interlocutors.” Greeting exchanges have received considerable attention in 
anthropological linguistics, often in terms of their potential for turn-taking 
or as culturally determined formulaic routines (Kuiper and Flindall 2000), 
but also as a linguistic reflection of social (in)equalities (Irvine 1974; Brown 
and Ford 1964) or politeness strategies (Brown and Levinson 1987; Brown 
and Gilman 1972). Research on the ritual exchange of greeting procedures 
has shown that the formulae used are by no means monolithic or obligatory 
and that they may vary according to extralinguistic parameters of the inter-
action, such as the social status of the interlocutors, degree of formality / 
informality of the contextual setting, regionality, etc. 
Formulaic expressions are therefore as much subject to variation (and 
hence to potential change, see below) as are phonological and syntactic 
features, and a few examples illustrate the dimension of local or stylistic sig-
nificance of formulaic greeting expressions. For instance, some local Swiss 
German dialects display a wide stylistic dimension of greeting routines: salli
or hoi, meaning ‘hello’, are used in interactions between mutually acquainted 
speakers, indicating intimacy and informality, whereas guete daag or grüezi /
griezi (see below) are more formal expressions, usually between interlocu-
tors who are not familiar or on formal terms. We find a very similar con-
text-dependent usage in Australia and New Zealand (Kuiper 1991), where 
the formula gidday is not only a local greeting but also an emblem of the 
encounter’s context and the speaker’s social or regional provenience: 
If I use the New Zealand English formula Gidday with a wink and a charac-
teristic quick southeast to northwest movement of the head, the conditions 
of use for such a greeting are relatively specific; it is an informal greeting to 
one with whom one is not intimate. It is not middle class but characteristi-
cally working class, and/or rural. It is often used when no response is ex-
pected. (Kuiper 1991: 200)
Of particular relevance for the present paper is the fact that greetings vary 
regionally and that formulaic and idiomatic expressions of this type thus 
have the potential of conveying local identities, not only of individual groups 
but, as in the case of gidday in Australia and New Zealand, of entire com-

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Greetings as an act of identity in Tristan da Cunha English 
355
munities or nationalities. Whereas it is often the case that local regionalised 
dialects have reflexes of formulae also found in more widely spoken Stan-
dard varieties (for instance, Swiss German uff wiederluege for Standard 
German ‘Auf Wiedersehen’), some greeting formulae are exclusively used 
by individual groups and thus function as powerful indicators of regional 
origins and group affiliation. Thus, the Swiss German formula grüezi (or, in 
some dialects, griezi), meaning ‘hello’, is confined to speakers of Swiss 
German and not used in any other dialect of German; similarly, the greeting 
formula servus is predominantly found in Austria and Bavaria. Hence, 
greeting formulae such as griezi, servus and gidday are intricately attached 
to the communities and cultures in which they are used; they may thus be 
considered as more or less salient markers that express group identity and 
membership.
2
This is further corroborated by the case of howdy in American English, 
a very common greeting formula in the rural US South and Midwest. Due 
to the fact that howdy is by and large restricted to these areas, it is per-
ceived as a salient (even stereotyped) emblematic formula outside these 
areas, where it is commonly perceived as a hallmark of southern or Mid-
western American English. Often, formulae restricted to few varieties are 
stereotyped and recognised as regional markers by those population groups 
who would not use them. Dennis Preston (personal correspondence, June 
2002) confirms this assertion and outlines the stereotypical interpretation of 
howdy in the northern parts of the United States as follows: 
(1) Western cowboy, tough but shy. John Wayne always says “Howdy 
ma’m,” and cowboys always say “Howdy Pardner” (= partner) when they 
greet each other. 
(2) Rural, countrified; seen as “Midwestern farm-boy” by the sophisticated 
bicoastal crowd. 
(3) Southern, but only with the “modified” pronunciation which monoph-
thongizes the first vowel (to [a:]) and tenses the second (to [i]). (In joke 
books you often see southern “Howdy” respelled as “Heidi”). 
Even though the greeting howdy can certainly be regarded as rural through-
out the US (and can be heard in rural Delaware, as well as in non-metro-
politan regions of Illinois or New Mexico), Midwesterners and Southern-
ers, due to the fact that they are most commonly associated with rural farm-
ing pursuits, are most likely to be caricatured as users (of course, with the 
exception of stereotypical usage of the cowboys in Hollywood Western pro-
ductions). As a consequence, howdy is commonly perceived to be a stereo-

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Daniel Schreier 
typical marker of the speechways of those who are most likely to represent 
the associations attributed to those who use expressions like howdy. A lin-
guistic expression and a socioculturally constructed stereotype reinforce both 
usage and common interpretation. 
If we accept the fact that greeting formulae, like all phonological, syn-
tactic and pragmatic language features, are subject to linguistic variation 
and change, and if we also agree that such formulae may serve as emblems 
of group membership and become subject to (occasionally strong) socially 
perceived stereotyping, then they offer the possibility to investigate not 
only how greeting procedures and routines develop in time and vary from 
group to group or from region to region, but also how they are constructed 
and used by individual speech communities as a symbol of local identity. 
These issues are addressed with reference to the form, function and so-
cial significance of the greeting formula how you is? on Tristan da Cunha, 
an isolated island in the South Atlantic Ocean. The aim is to look into is-
sues such as the local construction and interpretation of specific formulae, 
as well as their potential to mark and emblemise insider knowledge and 
membership, and also how social significance attached to linguistic expres-
sions operates on individual and societal levels. These questions are dis-
cussed with reference to how you is? on Tristan da Cunha but contextual-
ised and complemented with findings from similar communities in other