love

   Literary references, beginning with Chaucer, show that this term has been in use as an endearment since at least the fourteenth century. Originally it was used to a beloved person; in modern times, in Britain, it has become watered down into a friendly term used by men and women mainly to women and children, though in Yorkshire and across the Pennines a male bus-conductor, for instance, might easily address a male passenger as ‘love’. Further north, ‘hinny’ and ‘pet’ replace ‘love’.

   Shakespeare’s use of the vocative is always in its ‘strong’ sense, and addressed to a wife or other loved one. In The Taming of the Shrew, for instance, there are examples of: love, gentle love, my honey love; elsewhere in the plays one finds: sweet love, my dearest love, my love, etc. Lysander uses the last of these to Helena, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ‘My love, my life, my soul, fair Helena!’ ‘O excellent!’ says Helena, convinced that he is making fun of her. This particular play, with its complicated twists and turns of relationships, contains a full catalogue of Elizabethan endearments, as well as genteel insults. Elsewhere, another Shakespearean lover says: ‘Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptiz’d;/ Henceforth I never will be Romeo.’ Love is often used vocatively in the same play.

   In John Halifax, Gentleman, by Mrs Craik, we find: ‘Love’ - John usually called her ‘love’ - putting it at the beginning of a sentence, as if it had been her natural Christian name - which, as in all infant households, had been gradually dropped or merged into the universal title of ‘Mother’.

   Mrs Craik’s sentimentality is not attractive to the modern reader, but it is interesting that she recognized the role of vocatives in substituting for normal names.

   There is a comment of a different kind in Travelling People, by B.S.Johnson: It will have been noted that the word love has not been used in the narration of the relationship between Kim and Henry, save as a vocative endearment. Some explanation of this is desirable. Neither Kim nor Henry thought of themselves as ‘in love’ with the other, and if either of them had said ‘I love you,’ then the other would have immediately suspected insincerity. Yet there was love between them.

   There follows an essay on the nature of love, but the interesting point here is the use of ‘love’ as a vocative to indicate a half-way stage between friendship and love in its full romantic sense. The following letter, which appeared in the woman’s magazine My Weekly some years ago, comments on the purely friendly use of love and similar terms: ‘For some time now I’ve been taken to and from hospital twice a week by ambulance. This is a selection of names I’ve been given by the ambulance men: love, dear, dearest, pet, petal, sunshine, flower, bonnie flower, rosie, bonnie lassie.’

   The correspondent remarked that she was 91 years old, and thought that the use of such terms ‘do more good than the doctor’s medicine’.

   It is pleasant to know that such vocative usage can be interpreted in the spirit in which it is meant; many women today seem to object to such terms being used to them. The issue was discussed in the pages of the Guardian newspaper in November 1987, when it was reported that a London borough council had compiled an inventory of terms ‘which can be used offensively’. A columnist, Martin Wainwright, argued that ‘love’ was merely friendly, especially in the northern counties. In an angry reply, Marilyn Martin-Jones, a lecturer in the department of Linguistics at Lancaster University, said that

   A term of endearment like luv can be used by both women and men to express intimacy or solidarity, or it can be used as a putdown. Most women can remember occasions when they have been attempting to make a serious point in conversation or in a meeting at work, and their contribution has been dismissed by a man in terms such as: ‘Oh, come on, luv’, or ‘Don’t worry, sunshine.’ These practices are often below the level of consciousness. The writing of codes of practice represents an attempt to bring these practices above the level of awareness.

   The attitudes referred to by the correspondent would of course remain, conveyed by tone of voice, facial gesture, and the like, even if the vocatives were not used. Banning the use of vocatives (and all would have to be banned, since any one of them can be used as a putdown if said in the wrong way) would not change underlying attitudes.

   The spelling ‘luv’, incidentally, has become commonplace in British English. It began as an attempt to indicate pronunciation by workingclass speakers, but serves a useful function in distinguishing the term of address from the normal word. As we have seen, in some parts of Britain, ‘love’ is used by males to males. This usage also occurs in the theatrical profession. N.J.Crisp, in Festival, has a theatre director who uses ‘loves’ to address the entire cast, men and women. This would not be normal social usage in the south of England, where most people would assume that a speaker using ‘love’ to men was homosexual. Jake’s Thing, by Kingsley Amis, has two male university colleagues talking to one another. One says: ‘You’ve never fancied them [i.e. women] for an instant and you like them.’ ‘As you say,’ replies the other, ‘but Jake, love, you’re depressing yourself.’