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.