Dude in British English: towards a non-gendered term of address

This article explores the reported use of the term of address dude in British English in the United Kingdom through the analysis of the responses to a sociolinguistic self-report study on the participants’ use of this term of address. To assess the general use of dude in this variety of national English in the United Kingdom, several social variables will be considered, as well as the social relationships between speakers and addressee. Furthermore, the main hypothesis of this article is that dude is now used - by British English native speakers that have been brought up in the United Kingdom - as an inclusive term of address and speakers are not concerned with the addressee’s gender when they choose to use this term of address. The statistical analysis shows that younger speakers use dude to address all genders equally, while older speakers prefer using this term mostly to address male interlocutors. Moreover, the quantitative results show that dude presents a high degree of informality and familiarity since speakers reported the highest use of this term of address with addressees with whom they have close relationships, such as close friends and siblings.