Dispensing with Europe: A comparative linguistic anthropology of honorific pronouns

Abstract

The study of pronominal address in European languages is enriched by a comparative linguistic anthropology of honorific registers of person deixis. In European speech communities, token-sourced interdiscursivity plays a crucial role in framing the meaning of honorific (V) and nonhonorific (T) pronouns; the pronouns exchanged between members of an interlocutor dyad in a given discursive event presuppose the use of those same pronouns in sequentially prior events of interaction between that dyad. The shift from V to T within a serially ordered speech chain of discursive events - sanctified in the interaction ritual of ‘dispensation’ - is the pivot of the system, emblematizing a mutual incorporation of alter into the relatively ‘intimate’ sphere of interpersonal relationality. Beyond Europe, T-V systems typically rely more heavily on type-sourced interdiscursivity. In these cases, use of T or V stereotypically indexes particular social categories of person or relationship. There are profound formal-functional convergences in honorific person deixis cross-linguistically, like the use of nonsingular number to index deference. Nevertheless, there are important differences too. The pragmatic structures characterizing honorific registers of person deixis are shown to co-vary in important ways with this distinction between token-sourced and type-sourced social meaningfulness of pronominal alternants.