boss

Discussion of a brief note I posted here a couple of days ago, on boss as an address term, brings up two points; the need to clarify what kind of address term is at issue in this case; and the difficulty of gauging the sociolinguistic status of some usage, when all you have to go on is your own experience.

Ducati and Ares

(Following up on an account of the gay porn flick Close Up on AZBlogX, a posting about the first scene of the film, involving Trenton Ducati and Jessy Ares — in part about the use of language in this encounter and in part about the the assignment of roles — what I’ve called b vs. t — in this encounter. This is a close call: usually my postings analyzing the action in porn flicks go on AZBlogX, but in this case I thought there might be enough language-related stuff to put it on this blog. You should understand that there’s a lot of plainly described gay sex in this posting, though no photos — they’re already on AZBlogX — so you might want to pass.)

Brief notice: boss 4/12/13

For some time now, I’ve noticed a pattern of address term usage in local restaurants and cafes (three of them): I am addressed by servers and other employees there as boss. The speakers are all Hispanic men, younger than me (I’ve never gotten boss from anyone else; I don’t have employees of my own); and of course it’s crucial that I’m male; and it might be relevant that I’m a regular customer in all three places; and it might be relevant that the atmosphere of all three places is informal. (Some of these men sometimes address me as Arnold, but other times as boss.)

I assume that this is a resolution of a puzzle in social relations: sir would be the standard address term in service contexts, but seems far too formal and distancing given the social situation in these three places; and Arnold might seem too intimate on some occasions; so what to use instead?

What I don’t know is where boss (said with a friendly, even jocular tone) comes from. And why just Hispanic men? (Non-Hispanic and female servers seem always to opt for first names in such places; if they don’t know them already, they find them out and then memorize them.)

(Address terms are a long-standing interest of mine. Discussion of pal and sport here, boy here, and medical address terms here.)

Data points: address terms 11/17/10

Two address terms that caught my ear recently because they struck me as no longer widely in use:

(1) pal: in an episode of the 50s tv serial Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (Youtube for this episode here, Tom Corbett website here), one of the crew members to another, on the radio: “Ok, pal, she’s all yours” (referring to the next rocket firing).

(2) sport: in one episode of the gay porn film Arcade on Route 9 (Joe Gage for Titan Media) an older trucker (Ken Mack) hooks up with a young farmboy (Cole Ryan) and introduces him to the ways of gay sex, addressing him as “sport” throughout the encounter, as in a reference to “your big stiff dirty-boy boner; I’m here for you, sport”. (The farmboy mostly addresses the trucker as “sir”, leading to this weird bit of sex talk: “Suck my fuckin’ hard boner, sir”.)