In the 1980s and 90s, “dude” was everywhere, lending its cool detached nonchalance to ordinary expressions like, “Dude, what’s up?”
Other English vocatives heard regularly include names and nicknames, familial terms like “dad” or “nana,” formal terms like “ma’am” or “your honor,” and group-directed terms like “hey you guys” or “y’all.”
A glaring observation is that all these terms are masculine. Not only are “man,” “bro,” and “dude” about, well, dudes, but the same goes for “buddy” and “guy,” as well as the British “bruv” and the Australian “mate.”
While “man” and “dude” remain popular, listening in on Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s speech lends the impression that “bro” is nipping at their heels. Linguistic research based on self-reports, texts, tweets, and conversational recordings indeed shows an uptick in vocative “bro” for speakers born this century. Other variants, namely “bra” and “bruh,” are also gaining in popularity, especially in terms of self-reported usage among those who identified as non-Caucasian.
In the early 20th century, “man” became linked with jazz culture, with African American men calling each other “man” to signal respect, fellowship, and dignity, a counter to the racist “boy” often used to denigrate them. As jazz and beat culture spread more broadly, jazz slang like “man” traveled with it.
Now, it seems, “bro” is having its day. While “bro” as an abbreviation for “brother” has long been part of English. Familiarizer use of “bro” and “bruh” gained traction in African American culture as respectful greetings in the 1900s. Expansion onto the mainstream scene likely comes by way of popular music, movies, and social media, which have made African-American language visible to young people of other backgrounds. As for “brah,” surfers are thought to have brought this familiarizer to the mainland U.S. after hearing it in Hawaiian English, though a similar form can be found in Caribbean and South African English.
But what’s driving this intense need to use such familiarizers at all? The answer lies in changing social relations and practices which encourage use of address terms highlighting rapport, familiarity, and informality. In Shakespeare’s time, formal address terms like “lord” and “sir” were frequent ways to acknowledge relative rank, power, and status, but as more social mobility, increasing urbanization, and greater democratization have chipped away at formality and hierarchy in the centuries since, greater use of familiarizers paying heed to solidarity and equality has followed suit.
But regardless of the form they take, what doesn’t change is such familiarizers’ ability to project a sense of solidarity, jocularity, or chill detachment—a boon particularly for younger speakers where the value of sounding like you stand out while still fitting in is priceless.
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