Introduction

An honorific register is a reflexive model of pragmatic behavior that selectively associates specific behaviors with stereotypes of honor or respect. In any language, a number of speech forms are regarded by language users as stereotypically honorific indexicals; these comprise the discursive component of the register's semiotic range (3.9). Languages differ in their degree of elaboration of honorific repertoires and the range of stereotypic values associated with their use. In any language community all speakers do not employ honorific speech in the same manner; these differences or diacritics are usually grasped in stereotypes of ‘social kind’ of speaker, and sometimes ordered within register models as tightly ranked emblems of speaker distinction.

A variety of honorific registers have been discussed in previous chapters. The purpose of this chapter is to consider registers whose linguistic repertoires are more elaborate than the cases so far considered, and to assess some of the ways in which these formations mediate relations of status, rank, and power in social life. Of particular interest are cases where honorific repertoires are structurally elaborated into large lexical sets and grammatical paradigms. This type of semiotic organization makes these systems highly extractable from the interpersonal occasions in which they are used and amenable to elaborate forms of ideological reanalysis.

The fact that honorific registers are reflexive models is evident once we note that their use is neither necessary nor sufficient for paying ‘respect’ to others.