‘Whose father are you?’ Arabic teknonyms in a socio-pragmatic perspective

Teknonyms represent a special category of the addressing system of the Arabic language and most of its dialects. The present study analyzes Syrian Arabic teknonyms that have not been tackled before to highlight how often, in what situational contexts they are used and their pragmatic characteristics. The data were elicited from open-ended questionnaires supplemented by interviews with 74 representatives of the Syrian lingua-culture of both genders and subjected to a socio-pragmatic and lingua-cultural analysis. The findings show that teknonyms are an inherent feature of the modern Syrian culture and a significant identity characteristic of its representatives used as a marker of politeness. The results indicate that teknonyms pragmatically afford speakers the opportunity to simultaneously achieve closeness and respect.