Directives, Moral Authority, and Deontic Stance-Taking in Sakapultek Maya

Abstract:Directives are the primary grammatical resource in Sakapultek for speakers' self-positioning with regard to notions of necessity, obligation, and responsibility. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of naturally occurring talk, I argue that such deontic stances require grounding in a locus of moral authority and index idealized relationship types among participants in a communicative event; distinguishing the multiplicity of Sakapultek directive forms in these terms is more illuminating than analyzing them in terms of directness or politeness. I suggest that the stances offered by the various directive forms are grounded in relative degree of egocentric or "subjectively" grounded moral authority.