Publications
Publication details [#41869]
La France, Betty H. 1996. Honorifics. In Östman, Jan-Ola, Jef Verschueren, Jan Blommaert and Chris Bulcaen, eds. Handbook of Pragmatics.1995 Installment. John Benjamins.
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Annotation
This essay presents definitions of honorifics, as well as dimensions of variation and comparison and trends in theory and research. It also discusses how linguistic honorifics offer interesting perspectives on relationships between pragmatics and semantics. A work that significantly shifted the theoretical ground for research on honorifics and related phenomena is Brown & Levinson’s widely-cited essay on language and politeness (reissued in book form 1987).