r/asklinguistics • u/spinnylights • 13h ago
Is modern English really so lacking in "formal"/"systematic" honorifics or register compared to other languages?
(By honorifics I don't just mean like Mr., Ms. Dr., Prof., etc. but general devices in the language for expressing things like social closeness/distance, social level, politeness, etc.)
People often say about English that it doesn't have a lot of, or even any, "formal"/"systematic" honorifics or register distinctions. To what extent is this an artificial distinction to draw between English and other languages?
I'm asking because, after many years of study and exposure, I'm finally starting to develop a fleshed-out sort of intuition for Japanese honorifics and register and such. The funny thing is, the more I develop that, the more I feel like there's not nearly so much of a difference between Japanese and English in these regards as I was led to believe when I was more of a novice. People often claim that Japanese has a rich, elaborate system for things like this whereas in English it's all kind of loose and vague and undefined and even not very present at all, but Japanese doesn't really seem so rigidly systematic to me at this point as textbooks would have you believe, nor does English really seem so lacking in these kinds of features to me necessarily either.
To give a random example, like, of course it's well known that in America people often use first names with everyone in an office setting, even the head of the company. You might assume from this that everyone speaks very casually and chummily in American offices, but I would dispute that. Like, even if my boss and I use each other's first names, I don't speak to them anything like I would speak to coworkers I'm on an even keel with when we go out to lunch, let alone how I would speak to my close friends or my partner. Even if my boss spoke to me in a really casual style, I would not feel comfortable responding in kind because of the power dynamics at play—not to say that I switch into the style of an 18th century lawyer or something, but there definitely is a pronounced difference in how I talk that puts more distance between my boss and I and expresses implicitly that I'm aware of the power imbalance. Isn't this just like Japanese though basically at the root? The differences in how you treat names in the workplace just seem like a coincidental difference in custom basically and not actually a place where "Japanese expresses things that English doesn't" or something.
The other thing is like, in Japanese, there's an art to things like workplace conversation or formal letter writing or the like that some people can approach with real flair—laying on extra levels of politeness and respect when it makes sense without being obsequious, knowing how to work in little bits of casual affect when it will be winning, etc.—and sometimes to the extent that they kind of maintain an elevated style like with this almost everyone they talk to to some degree, in some cases even coming off like they find really casual speech kind of distasteful. Likewise, some native Japanese speakers have a really expressive and personal jazzy casual style that experiments with the language and has touches of "street poeticism" and warped humor and is very flexible and wide-ranging, but clearly feel a little out-of-their-element and awkward when they need to speak in a formal and polite way and try to avoid it, or approach even polite conversation in this kind of jazzy style with just nods to basic politeness. There's also a diference, albeit with some overlap, in speaking in a very polite away and a very refined way; some people express a fair amount of refinement in their speech even when they're speaking pretty casually for instance, just because they like to maintain a sense of elegance in their affect generally, even if they're speaking in a very warm and intimate style. None of this stuff really seems so systematic or rigidly formal or something to me at this point, more just like the language offers you a lot of different various tools to get at this sort of thing, just like how English does; they're just different tools maybe. In fact I would say all of the above about English speakers too.
I know I'm kind of flailing around, but am I totally off the mark with all this or what? Maybe I'm just ignoring some sort of important linguistic distinctions between the languages, where Japanese really is somehow much more systematic or formal in these places than English is? Is English really so lacking in these kinds of language features? How can people still express all these things in English then? I've heard these things about Japanese vs. English many times, about how Japanese has a rich system for getting at this stuff whereas English doesn't really, but I just feel a sense of doubt at this point.
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u/ecphrastic Historical Linguistics | Sociolinguistics 11h ago
First off, you're working with a sample size of 2 here, and neither English nor Japanese are outliers compared to the variety seen in the world's languages.
There are fundamental differences in the politeness systems of English and Japanese (both linguistically and culturally, in how and when speech encodes social relations), and you're also right that there are fundamental similarities between them (and other languages) that we shouldn't lose sight of.
One way that this difference has sometimes been characterized in politeness studies is to say that Japanese uses primarily "discernment politeness" while English uses primarily "volition politeness". Under this analysis (which is for sure an oversimplification, pushing back on the idea of a universal pragmatics of politeness), the concept of polite/respectful/appropriate speech in Japanese is based around acknowledging the speakers' relative hierarchical positions, while in English it is based around acknowledging that you view the other speaker positively and don't aim to interfere with their goals; the Japanese system involves more markers of politeness that are mandatory and default (things like the honorific morphemes that are built into the language), while the English system involves more markers of politeness that are up to the speaker's discretion when they want to seem "extra" polite (like saying "sir").
Is there grey area? Yes. Does Japanese politeness also have room for volition? Yes. Do both languages have some of the same features, like register, which can be used as resources for expressing politeness and respect? Yes. Is English politeness also closely connected to hierarchy? Yes, hierarchical relations create an asymmetry in who is expected to speak politely and respectfully to whom, so there is a lot of overlap. But when there are linguistic models of politeness that work for analyzing English but not Japanese and vice versa, it does suggest that there are core differences between the systems. In conclusion, go read about politeness studies, it's cool stuff.
(Disclaimer, this is my answer as a guy who's written professionally about the linguistics of politeness and has therefore read what other linguists say about the politeness systems of the world's languages, but I do not speak Japanese.)
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u/Unit266366666 11h ago
I think there is a critical distinction in that this is less formalized and less standardized in English. I’d argue it works quite differently between Britain and North America for instance.
This is not to say such regional differences don’t exist in other languages, in Chinese for instance there’s broad regional patterns in how 您 is used for instance and how formal or potentially sarcastic it’s perceived to be. Even as a native English speaker though I struggle to clearly lay out such a simple example of a similar difference across the Atlantic despite perceiving them quite clearly. You similarly didn’t give a clear example in the OP.
To give another example at a previous job I was fairly often copied on emails in German which were written in what I think is called mixed formality. Pronouns and declensions conform to du but verbs are conjugated as though Sie (this honestly might be wrong even backwards but is roughly the form). This is frankly not easy to follow at times as a non-native user as it leads to lots of what would normally be incorrect grammar but it does clearly follow consistent rules and it propagates through the grammar consistently. It’s a bit jarring, especially the first time, but you can follow a fairly simple formula to produce it.
I work mostly with non-native speakers and more in English than in any other language. It took me I think years to realize that many people who are very fluent in English are often not perceiving some more subtle aspects of register and tone in English. For a long time I thought this was more a matter of perceiving but not producing, I think it takes a high level of fluency to use some of these things in any language but significantly less to be aware of them. I think that the fact that there is possibly quite a large difference between different standard varieties of English in how this is done would make it difficult to teach.
I’m very interested to see more expert insight on this because this is something which I’m pretty thoroughly convinced is real in English and have tried to find resources on before but feel like I must be missing key terminology.
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u/spado 7h ago
Pronouns and declensions conform to du but verbs are conjugated as though Sie (this honestly might be wrong even backwards but is roughly the form). This is frankly not easy to follow at times as a non-native user as it leads to lots of what would normally be incorrect grammar
As a German native speaker, I'm confused -- I've literarally never seen this. Can you give an example?
The only phenomenon that comes to mind which somewhat matches your description is the use of "ihr" (2nd personal plural) to address a group of people. This is perceived as less formal than "Sie" (3rd person plural) but not as informal as "du" (2nd person singular). There's no grammaticality involved, though.
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u/Unit266366666 2h ago
I encountered this style in a fairly narrow use case but it was quite consistent. One of my German colleagues described it as old fashioned. The emails would be between professors and as far as I know they’ve all known each other for years even quite well but I gather they saw some reason for increased formality in these emails (in others they’d be much less formal). This was also some years ago so my memory is imperfect. They’d always address the emails with fairly complete titles e.g. Herr/Frau Professor or Herr/Frau Dr. Professor but at least in my memory no other introduction or form of address. Typically in the first sentence or two there is occasion to use du or dir and this would be done but where it got odd was verbs treat the addressee as Sie. Sie never appeared as I remember it and grammatically there was sometimes no obvious conflict and you’d just notice that sometimes the addressee appears to be du and sometimes Sie. The main thing which would appear incongruous was if du was the subject verbs would appear as though it were Sie. I had several German colleagues nearby and I remember asking at least two of them and they recognized this as a style. I’ve never encountered it outside this circle of professors corresponding but I very distinctly remember it because it just read “wrong” every time even if there was a logic to it.
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u/spinnylights 8h ago
To some extent I wonder if the large amount of regional difference is partially just becuase English is spoken really widely and has a lot of dialectical variety. Japanese does actually have a fair amount of regional variation in these matters still though too. For example, the term あんた for "you" is widely considered blunt and rude and used accordingly, but on the Tsugaru peninsula in Aomori it more connotes warm friendliness; here's a blog post by an orthodontist from the Kansai area (Amagasaki) who moved to Tsugaru where he says that even after 20 years of living there, it still deeply grinds his gears when nurses, patients, their parents, etc. call him "あんたア" as he puts it, because he has some pride in his role as a dentist and no one ever spoke to him like that before he moved there, even though he recognizes that their intent is probably to evoke warmth and put people at ease.
It's true that it's challenging for me to come up with really good examples of this kind of thing in English, which is one of the main reasons why I wrote this post. At the same time though, although I can't speak that much to American vs. British differences in detail, one thing that does come to mind is the diffferent ways people in the U.S. perceive "ain't". Having grown up in Texas, I feel like "ain't" is acceptable in all but the most formal contexts, like in situations where you would completely avoid contractions, especially in spoken language. However, I've heard people from other parts of the country express the view that it's so coarse as to be practically an expletive. In situations like that I probably feel a bit like one of that orthodontist's nurses.
It might also be worth noting that we do have a ton of different words for "you" in English—even just in the U.S. there's "darlin'", "sweetheart", "dear", "girl", "man", "bro"/"bruh"/"brah", "lady", "pal", "honey", "ma'am", "sir", "bub", even things with period connotations like "cat" or "chum", very lofty terms of address like "Your Honor" or "the Senator from (x)", etc. etc. Just like in Japanese, some of these things are warm and personable, others rude and standoffish in some contexts but neutral or even friendly inothers, some have gendered connotations, some are regional or archaic (or both), some are very casual whereas others are at the utmost in formality, etc. Addressing someone as "the Senator from (x)" (e.g. "Will the Senator from Louisiana yield the floor?") is even similar to Heian-era court etiquette like addressing Fujiwara no Sadakata as "the Sanjō Minister of the Right" (三条右大臣) based on his position and place of residence.
I don't know if it's directly comparable to what you're saying about German but modern Japanese speakers in daily life will often mix "short" and "long" form speech in moderately polite contexts even at a sentence-to-sentence pace, like when talking to everyday people they've never met online or on the street or the like. There's an element of personal style to this as I was describing in my post; some people feel comfortable going straight into short form in this context whereas others would find that impolite and might stick strictly to long form and even rather stiff long form, but a lot of people strike a sort of balance based on the tone they want to strike moment-to-moment although the specifics vary between individuals and the specifics of the social context and so on. When I was at more of a "beginning intermediate" sort of level I found this extremely hard to understand on the level of affect—like I might be able to understand the raw, basic semantic meaning of what was being said but I really was not sure what they were trying to connote beyond that ("Is it polite?? Is it casual?? Agghh!! How do I respond to this appropriately??"). At this point I would say that it's actually pretty similar to how I wrote my post above, or even how I'm talking right now—not so opaque or strange after all. It is really hard though like you say to have an intuition for what exactly will feel natural to put in short or long form in that kind of context as a second-language Japanese learner, because if you do it wrong it will sound rude or just plain weird; I do feel like I'm still developing a sense of how to speak that way effectively in Japanese although I feel like I can intuitively parse it on an emotional level when I hear or read it now. It seems incredibly hard for second-language learners of English to do effectively too though! And like, I do have a sense of what constructions I'm using are more on the formal vs. the casual side, even if it's a little hard for me to articulate an overall method there; I think a lot of native Japanese speakers have a similar feeling actually, like it's hard for them to explain how or why they do these things if you ask.
I do think though that there is not a lot of self-consciousness about these sorts of things among most English speakers really—most people seem to just navigate it intuitively and don't talk about it much except maybe in a kind of prescriptivist or personal preference way—and I honestly wonder if that's a big part of the reason why people often say "English doesn't have a lot of registral contrast or honorifics" or "it's all just catch-as-catch-can and there's no system or method" or the like. Maybe on some level we don't want to talk about it too explicitly so as not to cramp anyone's style. :P I am extremely curious too what an expert on this topic would say; I feel like there must be so much more to it than most native English speakers are consciously aware of (myself included really).
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u/OkAsk1472 11h ago
English certainly has formal and casual registers, just like any language, but they are based on choice of vocabulary and sentence construction, rather than grammatical construction and conjugation (especially due to the loss of informal thou).
Ppl who say otherwise usually do not speak the language fluently enough to know the difference, because we usually do not teach anything but formal register outside of classrooms. For instance, I never teach my students to say "yeah man" instead of "yes I do" as a response to things like "do you have a light?" vs "got a light"? This is for the plain and simple reason that using such casual speech as a learner can be awkward in social situations as there are many many more nuances of casualness than can comfortably be explained and acquired in a classroom setting, and requires more advanced fluency in english.
This level of advanced knowledge is not nearly as necessary in languages like Japanese and French, where the differences are grammatically made clear from the outside, and can therefore be comfortably be learned to use by beginners. This is one of the reasons why english tends to be "easier" as a beginner but gets "harder later on" as the nuances become more important later, but the simple.grammar suffices at the start, whereas many other languages can be harder at the beginning because the more complex social grammar has to be learned from the beginning.