A scientist or salesman? Identity construction through referent honorifics on a Japanese shopping channel program

Abstract

This paper explores how referent honorifics contribute to identity construction on a Japanese TV shopping channel program. Drawing on Ochs' twostep model of indexicality (1993, 1996) and Agah's proposal (1993) that honorifics are not directly linked to social status but index a 'relative position within events of discursive interaction' (p. 134), this paper first proposes that the direct index of the Japanese referent honorifics is the act of elevating the addressee and/or the third party (in the case of humble forms, the elevation of the addressee and/or the third party is achieved by the speaker's lowering him/ herself) and then examines how the male guest's dual identities (i.e., those of scientist and salesman) are constructed on the program by qualitatively analyzing the use or non-use of referent honorifics and co-occurring linguistic features. The paper finds that while the female host positions the guest as a scientist by addressee-elevating strategies including referent honorifics, the male guest constructs his own identity as a scientist by employing a detached stance indexed by avoidance of referent honorifics and other co-occurring linguistic forms. In contrast, his salesman identity is indexed by the use of the humble forms. The paper contributes to our understanding that referent honorifics do not simply mirror pre-existing social realities.