Animal names used in addressing people in Serbian

The paper deals with combined metaphorical/vocative uses of animal names in Serbian in addressing people, both abusively and affectionately, thereby expressing the speakers’ attitude towards their addressee. The discussion is based on the results obtained in a survey conducted with some 100 university students of linguistics. The survey was organized in the following way: the students were given a questionnaire containing 40 animal names and were asked (a) to decide if they would use a given animal name to address a male or a female person, or both, (b) to determine if they would use the name abusively or affectionately, (c) to say how frequently they would use the name, (d) to give the morphosyntactic structure in which they would use the name, and (e) to describe a concrete situation in which they would use the name. The research shows that animal vocatives are usually used as human invectives, although a certain number of vocatives (mostly diminutives) are used to express affection. The results are further analyzed with respect to: (a) the typical morphosyntactic structures in which the animal names occur, (b) the typical situations that provoke such uses, and (c) semantico-pragmatic motivations for the choice of particular names.