T–V distinction

The T–V distinction is the contextual use of different pronouns that exists in some languages and serves to convey formality or familiarity. Its name comes from the Latin pronouns tu and vos. The distinction takes a number of forms and indicates varying levels of politeness, familiarity, courtesy, age, or even insult toward the addressee. The field that studies and describes this phenomenon is sociolinguistics.
Many languages lack this type of distinction, instead relying on other morphological or discourse features to convey formality. English historically contained the distinction, using the pronouns thou and you, but the familiar thou largely disappeared from the era of Early Modern English onward, with the exception of a few dialects. Additionally, British commoners historically spoke to nobility and royalty using the third person rather than the second person, a practice that has fallen out of favour. English speakers today often employ semantic analogues to convey the mentioned attitudes towards the addressee, such as whether to address someone by given name or surname or whether to use sir or madam. Under a broader classification, T and V forms are examples of honorifics.
The T–V distinction is expressed in a variety of forms; two particularly common means are:

addressing a single individual using the second-person plural forms in the language, instead of the singular ;
addressing individuals with another pronoun with its own verb conjugations.
Origin and development

The terms T and V, based on the Latin pronouns tu and vos, were first used in a paper by the social psychologist Roger Brown and the Shakespearean scholar Albert Gilman. This was a historical and contemporary survey of the uses of pronouns of address, seen as semantic markers of social relationships between individuals. The study considered mainly French, Italian, Spanish and German. The paper was highly influential and, with few exceptions, the terms T and V have been used in subsequent studies.
The status of the single second-person pronoun you in English is controversial among linguistic scholars. For some, the English you keeps everybody at a distance, although not to the same extent as V pronouns in other languages. For others, you is a default neutral pronoun that fulfils the functions of both T and V without being
the equivalent of either, so an N-V-T framework is needed, where N indicates neutrality.

History and usage in language

In classical Latin, tu was originally the singular, and vos the plural, with no distinction for honorific or familiar. According to Brown and Gilman, the Roman emperors began to be addressed as vos in the 4th century AD. They mention the possibility that this was because there were two emperors at that time, but also mention that "plurality is a very old and ubiquitous metaphor for power." This usage was extended to other powerful figures, such as Pope Gregory I. However, Brown and Gilman note that it was only between the 12th and 14th centuries that the norms for the use of T- and V-forms crystallized. Less commonly, the use of the plural may be extended to other grammatical persons, such as the "royal we" in English.
Brown and Gilman argued that the choice of form is governed by either relationships of "power" or "solidarity," depending on the culture of the speakers, showing that "power" had been the dominant predictor of form in Europe until the 20th century. Thus, it was quite normal for a powerful person to use a T-form but expect a V-form in return. However, in the 20th century the dynamic shifted in favour of solidarity, so that people would use T-forms with those they knew, and V-forms in service encounters, with reciprocal usage being the norm in both cases.

Early history: the power semantic

In the Early Middle Ages, the pronoun vos was used to address the most exalted figures, emperors and popes, who would use the pronoun tu to address a subject. This use was progressively extended to other states and societies, and down the social hierarchy as a mark of respect to individuals of higher rank, religious authority, greater wealth, or seniority within a family. The development was slow and erratic, but a consistent pattern of use is estimated to have been reached in different European societies by the period 1100 to 1500. Use of V spread to upper-class individuals of equal rank, but not to lower class individuals. This may be represented in Brown and Gilman's notation:

Modification: the solidarity semantic

Speakers developed greater flexibility of pronoun use by redefining relationships between individuals. Instead of defining the father–son relationship as one of power, it could be seen as a shared family relationship. Brown and Gilman term this the semantics of solidarity. Thus a speaker might have a choice of pronoun, depending on how they perceived the relationship with the person addressed. Thus a speaker with superior power might choose V to express fellow feeling with a subordinate. For example, a restaurant customer might use V to their favourite waiter. Similarly, a subordinate with a friendly relationship of long standing might use T. For example, a child might use T to express affection for their parent.
This may be represented as:
These choices were available not only to reflect permanent relationships, but to express momentary changes of attitude. This allowed playwrights such as Racine, Molière, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare to express a character's inner changes of mood through outward changes of pronoun.
For centuries, it was the more powerful individual who chose to address a subordinate either with T or with V, or to allow the subordinate to choose. For this reason, the pronouns were traditionally defined as the "pronoun of either condescension or intimacy" and "the pronoun of reverence or formality". Brown and Gilman argue that modern usage no longer supports these definitions.

Modern history

Developments from the 19th century have seen the solidarity semantic applied more consistently. It has become less acceptable for a more powerful individual to exercise the choice of pronoun. Officers in most armies are not permitted to address a soldier as T. Most European parents cannot oblige their children to use V. The relationships illustrated above have changed in the direction of the following norms:
The tendency to promote the solidarity semantic may lead to the abolition of any choice of address pronoun. During the French Revolution, attempts were made to abolish V. In 17th century England, the Society of Friends obliged its members to use only T to everyone, and some continue to use T to one another. In most Modern English dialects, the use of T is archaic and no longer exists outside of poetry or dialect.

Changes in progress

It was reported in 2012 that use of the French vous and the Spanish usted are in decline in social media. An explanation offered was that such online communications favour the philosophy of social equality, regardless of usual formal distinctions. Similar tendencies were observed in German, Persian, Chinese, Italian, and Estonian.

History of use in individual languages

English

The Old English and Early Middle English second person pronouns thou and ye were used for singular and plural reference respectively with no T–V distinction. The earliest entry in the Oxford English Dictionary for ye as a V pronoun in place of the singular thou exists in a Middle English text of 1225 composed in 1200. The usage may have started among the Norman French nobility in imitation of Old French. It made noticeable advances during the second half of the 13th century. During the 16th century, the distinction between the subject form ye and the object form you was largely lost, leaving you as the usual V pronoun. After 1600, the use of ye in standard English outside of regional dialects was confined to literary and religious contexts or as a consciously archaic usage.
David Crystal summarises Early Modern English usage thus:
V would normally be used

by people of lower social status to those above them
by the upper classes when talking to each other, even if they were closely related
as a sign of a change in the emotional temperature of an interaction

T would normally be used

by people of higher social status to those below them
by the lower classes when talking to each other
in addressing God or Jesus
in talking to ghosts, witches, and other supernatural beings
in an imaginary address to someone who was absent
as a sign of a change in the emotional temperature of an interaction

The T–V distinction was still well preserved when Shakespeare began writing at the end of the 16th century. However, other playwrights of the time made less use of T–V contrasts than Shakespeare. The infrequent use of T in popular writing earlier in the century such as the Paston Letters suggest that the distinction was already disappearing from gentle speech. In the first half of the 17th century, thou disappeared from Standard English, although the T–V distinction was preserved in many regional dialects. When the Quakers began using thou again in the middle of the century, many people were still aware of the old T–V distinction and responded with derision and physical violence.
In the 19th century, one aspect of the T–V distinction was restored to some English dialects in the form of a pronoun that expressed friendly solidarity, written as y'all. Unlike earlier thou, it was used primarily for plural address, and in some dialects for singular address as well. The pronoun was first observed in the southern states of the US, although its precise origin is obscure. The pronoun spread rapidly throughout the southern states, and other regions of the US and beyond. This pronoun is not universally accepted, and may be regarded as either nonstandard or a regionalism.
Yous as a plural is found mainly in England, Scotland, parts of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, northern Nova Scotia and parts of Ontario in Canada and parts of the northeastern United States, including in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and scattered throughout working-class communities in the American Rust Belt.