A pragmatic analysis of the addressing patterns and functions of the Saudi masculine vocative <i>yakhy</i>

Abstract Previous work has shown that masculine vocatives are increasingly used beyond their typical context of designating a masculine addressee across a range of languages. Building on this scholarship, this study investigates the Saudi Arabic vocative yakhy (‘my brother’), drawing on a self-report survey and a corpus of X.com (formerly Twitter) posts. The findings reveal that yakhy exhibits usage patterns comparable to those of several vocatives in other languages. It is used to address both men and women and serves various interactional functions. Moreover, yakhy displays rich stance-taking and indexical properties, making it a useful resource for navigating interactional and cultural contexts. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of yakhy and offer broader insights into the cross-linguistic patterning and development of masculine vocatives.