The use and interpretation of addressee honorifics and plain forms in Japanese: Diversity, multiplicity, and ambiguity

The general public as well as researchers often subscribe to claims that there are socially agreed-upon rules of honorifics and that the use of honorifics is simply a matter of observing those rules. In this study, I first examine native speakers’ opinions posted on an online blog-site and illustrate the existence of competing ideologies of honorifics, suggesting that their use is not simply a matter of following rules. I then analyze six audio-taped conversations and show wide inter- and intra-speaker variation in the use of honorific and plain forms. I contend that such variation cannot be accounted for by rules that link linguistic forms directly to certain contextual features, no matter how many features are identified. While speakers may be constrained by what they think are societal norms, it is ultimately the speaker that determines the choice of these forms. I argue that such a choice reflects the affective stance the speaker strategically takes toward a given context on the basis of his/her beliefs about honorific use, and that the relevant contextual features are only indirectly indexed, or implicated, through the stance expressed by honorific or plain forms. This approach allows us to account for the diverse use of these linguistic forms as resources for constructing desired contexts, including relationships, identities, speech acts/activities, and settings. It can also explain the diversity, multiplicity, and ambiguity of the situated meanings of honorific and plain forms as indexical signs.