Addressor

Addressor is a term used to describe the speaker or sender of a message in a communicative act. The counterpart term is usually addressee, the recipient of the message. The concept is employed in linguistics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis to analyze how speakers position themselves, convey intention, and establish social relations through language.

In linguistic and discourse analyses, the addressor’s choices shape interpersonal meaning. This includes the use of address forms, pronouns, vocatives, politeness strategies, and the framing of utterances within the conversational context. The addressor’s perspective or point of view can influence deictic reference, modality, and stance-taking, and may shift across sentences or dialogue acts. Understanding the addressor helps explain nuances such as formality, power relations, and solidarity in communication.

In computing and information technology, the term addressor is occasionally used to refer to a component or function that provides or generates an address for memory, a bus, or a network channel. This usage is specialized and less common than its linguistic sense. It typically denotes the source of addressing information rather than a social role.

Related terms include addressee, sender, recipient, and encoder. The concept of addressor emphasizes the act of addressing and the speaker’s role in directing the communication, while the addressee emphasizes reception and interpretation. Examples include analyzing how an addressor selects vocatives or politeness strategies to frame an utterance for a particular addressee.