In linguistics, an honorific (abbreviated hon) is a grammatical or morphosyntactic form that encodes the relative social status of the participants of the conversation. Distinct from honorific titles, linguistic honorifics convey formality form, social distance, politeness pol, humility hbl, deference, or respect through the choice of an alternate form such as an affix, clitic, grammatical case, change in person or number, or an entirely different lexical item. A key feature of an honorific system is that one can convey the same message in both honorific and familiar forms—i.e., it is possible to say something like (as in an oft-cited example from Brown and Levinson) "The soup is hot" in a way that confers honor or deference on one of the participants of the conversation. Honorific speech is a type of social deixis, as an understanding of the context—in this case, the social status of the speaker relative to the other participants or bystanders—is crucial to its use. There are three main types of honorifics, categorized according to the individual whose status is being expressed:
Addressee (or speaker/hearer) Referent (or speaker/referent) Bystander (or speaker/bystander) Addressee honorifics express the social status of the person being spoken to (the hearer), regardless of what is being talked about. For example, Javanese has three different words for "house" depending on the status level of the person spoken to. Referent honorifics express the status of the person being spoken about. In this type of honorific, both the referent (the person being spoken about) and the target (the person whose status is being expressed) of the honorific expression are the same. This is exemplified by the T–V distinction present in many Indo-European languages, in which a different second-person pronoun (such as tu or vous in French) is chosen based on the relative social status of the speaker and the hearer (the hearer, in this case, also being the referent). Bystander honorifics express the status of someone who is nearby, but not a participant in the conversation (the overhearer). These are the least common, and are found primarily in avoidance speech such as the "mother-in-law languages" of aboriginal Australia, where one changes one's speech in the presence of an in-law or other tabooed relative. A fourth type, the Speaker/Situation honorific, does not concern the status of any participant or bystander, but the circumstances and environment in which the conversation is occurring. The classic example of this is diglossia, in which an elevated or "high form" of a language is used in situations where more formality is called for, and a vernacular or "low form" of a language is used in more casual situations. Politeness can be indicated by means other than grammar or marked vocabulary, such as conventions of word choice or by choosing what to say and what not to say. Politeness is one aspect of register, which is a more general concept of choosing a particular variety of language for a particular purpose or audience.
T–V distinction in Indo-European languages
One common system of honorific speech is T–V distinction. The terms T-form and V-form to describe the second person pronouns tu and vos, respectively, were introduced by Brown and Gilman, whose 1960 study of them introduced the idea that the use of these forms was governed by "power and solidarity." The Latin tu refers to the singular T-form, while the Latin vos refers to the V-form, which is usually plural-marked. Tu is used to express informality, and in contrast, vos is used to express politeness and formality. T–V distinction is characteristic of many Indo-European languages, including Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Odia, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, and Russian, as detailed below.
Brazilian Portuguese
The pronouns tu (informal) and você (more formal) fit the T–V pattern nicely, except that their use varies a great deal from region to region. For instance, in most parts of Brazil, tu is not used; whereas in the northern state of Maranhão and southern regions, it is. A third lexical option is added to the honorific scheme: o senhor and a senhora (literally meaning "sir" and "madam"), which are third-person references that are used in direct address that would normally require the second person tu or você). These forms are highly formal and used when speaking "upward" and always used in formal correspondence, such as in governmental letters, to authorities, customers and elders.
Indo-Aryan languages
Many Indo-Aryan languages, including Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Odia, and Bengali, have three instead of two levels of honorifics. The use of tū, tum and āp in Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), or their cognates in other languages (e.g. Odia tu, tumē/tumbhē and āpåṇå, Bengali tui, tumi and āpni; respectively), indicates increasing levels of formality or social status of the addressee. The verb changes accordingly to agree with the pronoun. In other Indo-Aryan languages, such as Punjabi, Gujarati and Marathi, while there ostensibly exists a three-way distinction in formality, in practice, the cognate of āp is almost never used (though in Punjabi, āp jī is used in somewhat rare cases), and there is only a two-way distinction between the tū- and tum-equivalents (in fact, the tum-equivalent in Punjabi, i.e., tusī̃/tusā̃, is both used as āp and tum are used in Hindustani).
Persian As an Indo-European language the pronouns tu (informal) and šumā (more formal form of second-person single and also used alone for second-person plural) fit the T–V pattern except that šumā is actually a modern Persian word originating from the Early New Persian (ENP) words šēwā where wā used as more formal form of second-person single and also used alone for second-person plural and šē which means for him or his. Therefore, the words šēwā together, had been used to refer to formal form of second-male person single and also used alone for second-male person plural.
Polish
Polish incorporates grammatical and lexical politeness. It uses grammatical category of honorifics within certain verbs and personal pronouns; this honorific system is namely split into two basic levels – the familiar (T) and the polite (V):
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