Tongan honorifics and their underlying concepts of mana and tapu
A verbal taboo in its emic sense
The Tongan language has honorific registers, called a ‘language of respect’ (Churchward 1953). These are two limited sets of lexemes used to refer to people of chiefly and kingly rank and thus
honour the societal stratification. Anthropological-linguistic research reveals that these honorifics are a
tapu-motivated linguistic practice. The Polynesian concept of tapu (source of the loanword
taboo) means that entities with more mana (‘supernatural power’) such as persons of higher rank and their
personal belongings are ‘sacred’, and it is ‘forbidden’ to get in physical touch with them. The respectful terminology
(hou‘eiki and tu‘i) is restricted to such tapu entities (signifiers), and
its generic character shows that direct verbal contact with the common kakai signifier is avoided. Thus, the
honorific registers function as a verbal taboo in its emic sense.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The cultural context
- 2.1Stratification in Tongan society
- 2.2The meaning of mana and tapu
- 2.3Practices of physical avoidance in Tonga
- 3.Honorifics
- 4.Honorific registers in Tongan language
- 4.1Semantics of the vocabulary of respect
- 4.2The use of the respectful registers
- 5.Speech preludes
- 6.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References
References
Agha, Asif
2007 Language
and social relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aikhenvald, Alexandra & Anne Storch
2019 Creativity
in language: Secret codes, special styles and linguistic taboo.
International Journal of
Language and
Culture 6 (1). 1–9.
Allan, Keith
2018 Taboo
words and language: An overview. In
Keith Allan (ed.),
The
Oxford handbook of taboo words and
language, 1–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Allan, Keith & Kate Burridge
2006 Forbidden
words: Taboo and the censoring of
language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barnes, Shawn & Terry Hunt
2005 Sāmoa’s
pre-contact connections in Western Polynesia and beyond.
Journal of the Polynesian
Society 114(3). 227–266.
Beaglehole, John
(ed.) 1967 The
journals of Captain James Cook on his voyages of discovery, vol. III, part 1: The voyage of the resolution and discover,
1776–1780. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
Besnier, Niko
1992 Polynesian
languages. In
William Bright (ed.),
International
encyclopedia of
linguistics, vol. 31, 245–251. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bott, Elisabeth
1981 Power
and rank in the Kingdom of Tonga.
Journal of the Polynesian
Society 90(1). 7–81.
Brandes, Stanley
2018 An
anthropological approach to taboo words and language. In
Keith Allan (ed.),
The
Oxford handbook of taboo words and
language, 372–390. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brown, Penelope & Stephen Levinson
1987 Politeness:
Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Campbell, Ian
1992 Island
kingdom: Tonga ancient and
modern. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press.
Churchward, Clerk
1953 Tongan
grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Churchward, Clerk
1959 Dictionary
Tongan – English, English –
Tongan. Nuku‘alofa: Government of Tonga Printing Press.
Comrie, Bernard
1976 Linguistic
politeness axes: Speaker-addressee, speaker-reference, speaker-bystander. Pragmatic
microfiche, 1.71, A3–B1.
Dixon, R. M. W.
1980 The
languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Douaire-Marsaudon, Françoise
1997 Nourriture
et richesses. Les objets cérémoniels comme signe d’identité à Tonga et à
Wallis. In
Serge Tcherkézoff &
Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon (eds.),
Le
Pacific-Sud aujourd’hui: Identités et transformations
culturelles, 261–287. Paris: CNRS Editions.
Fleming, Luke & Michael Lempert
2011 The
unmentionable: Verbal taboo and the moral life of language.
Anthropological
Quarterly 84(1). 5–13.
Fleming, Luke
2015 Taxonomy
and taboo. The (meta)pragmatic sources of semantic abstraction in avoidance registers.
Journal
of Linguistic
Anthropology 25(1). 43–65.
Foley, William
1997 Anthropological
linguistics: An
introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fox, James
2005 Ritual
languages, special registers and speech decorum in Austronesian
languages. In
Alexander Adelaar &
Nikolaus Himmelmann (eds.),
The
Austronesian languages of South East Asia and
Madagascar, 87–109. London: Routledge.
Gifford, Edward
1929 Tongan
society. Honolulu: Bernice Bishop Museum.
Greschat, Hans-Jürgen
1980 Mana
and tapu: Die Religion der Maori auf
Neuseeland. Berlin: Reimer.
Haugen, Jason & Susan Philips
2010 Tongan
chiefly language: The formation of an honorific speech register.
Language in
Society 39(5). 589–616.
Haviland, John
1978 Guugu-Yimidhirr
brother-in-law language.
Language in
Society 81. 365–393.
Keating, Elizabeth
1997 Honorific
possession: Power and language in Pohnpei, Micronesia.
Language in
Society 261. 247–268.
Keating, Elizabeth
1998 Power
sharing: Language, rank, gender, and social space in Pohnpei,
Micronesia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Keating, Elizabeth & Alessandro Duranti
2006 Honorific
resources for the construction of hierarchy in Samoan and Pohnpeian.
Journal of the Polynesian
Society 115(2). 145–172.
Krupa, Victor
1982 The
Polynesian languages: A
guide. London: Routledge.
Levinson, Stephen
1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lynch, John
1998 Pacific
languages: An introduction. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Mills, Andy
2016 Bodies
permeable and divine: Tapu, mana and the embodiment of hegemony in pre-Christian
Tongan. In
Matt Tomlinson &
Ty Kāwika Tengan (eds.),
New
mana: Transformations of a classic concept in Pacific languages and
cultures, 77–105. Canberra: ANU Press.
Milner, G. B.
1961 The
Samoan vocabulary of respect.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute 911. 296–317.
Philips, Susan
1991 Tongan
speech levels: Practice and talk about practice in the cultural construction of social
hierarchy. In
Robert Blust (ed.),
Currents
in Pacific linguistics. Papers on Austronesian languages and ethnolinguistics in honour of George W.
Grace (
Pacific Linguistics C
117), 369–382. Canberra: ANU Press.
Philips, Susan
2010 Semantic
and interactional indirectness in Tongan lexical honorification.
Journal of
Pragmatics 42(2). 317–336.
Philips, Susan
2011 How
Tongans make sense of the (non-)use of lexical honorifics.
Journal of Linguistic
Anthropology 21(2). 247–260.
Pizarro Pedraza, Andrea
2018 Introduction. In
Andrea Pizarro Pedraza (ed.),
Linguistic
taboo
revisited, 1–12. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Schulze, Wolfgang
2019 Circumnavigating
taboos: A functional and formal typology.
[URL] (
18 Nov 2020.)
Shore, Bradd
1989 Mana
and tapu. In
Alan Howard &
Robert Borofsky (eds.),
Developments
in Polynesian
Ethnology, 137–173. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Shumway, Eric
1971 Intensive
course in Tongan. Laie: Institute for Polynesian Studies.
Silverstein, Michael
1979 Language
structure and linguistic ideology. In
Paul Clyne,
William Hanks &
Carol Hofbauer (eds.),
The
elements. A parasession on linguistic units and
levels, 193–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society.
Silverstein, Michael
1981 The
limits of awareness. Austin, TX: Southwestern Educational Laboratory.
Simons, Gary
1982 Word
taboo and comparative Austronesian linguistics. In
Amran Halim,
Lois Carrington &
S. A. Wurm (eds.),
Accent
on
variety, 157–226. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Storch, Anne
2018 Typology
of secret languages and linguistic taboos. In
Alexandra Aikhenvald &
R. Dixon (eds.),
The
Cambridge handbook of linguistic
typology, 287–321. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taliai, ‘Opeti
1989 Social
differentiation of language levels. MA thesis, University of Auckland.
Van der Grijp, Paul
2005 Development
Polynesian style: Contemporary Futunan social economy and its cultural features.
Journal of the
Polynesian
Society 114(4). 311–338.
Wood-Ellem, Elisabeth
1999 Queen
Sālote of Tonga. The story of an era
1900–1965. Auckland: Auckland University Press.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Keller, Melanie, Philipp Striedl, Daniel Biro, Johanna Holzer & Kate Burridge
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.