‘Hello sweetie pie’: A sociolinguistic analysis of terms of endearment in a Ghanaian university

Following Brown and Gilman's (1960) study, sociolinguists have shown an increasing interest in the use of address forms in various social milieus such as religion, politics, media and academia. Using a two-pronged conceptual framework derived from interactional sociolinguistics and an ethnographic research paradigm, this study explores how students in a Ghanaian public university address one another, strategically deploying varied terms of endearment. Three key findings emerged from the study. The first finding is that university students use epithets, flora terms, royal terms and coinage from personal names as key terms of endearment. Second, these terms of endearment serve socio-pragmatic purposes; and third, the use of endearment terms among Ghanaian university students, as Afful (2006, 2007) intimates, suggests the innovativeness, playfulness and creativity of the students as well as the warmth and conviviality and/or vivacity of African culture, even in an educational provenance. These findings have implications for inter/cross-cultural communication, language use at an educational institution, and further sociolinguistic research on terms of endearment.