Definition
A bystander honorific is an honorific in which the social status of some other person present is expressed through choices made among linguistic alternants. These choices:
- are made based upon the person’s relationship to the speaker
-
do not depend on whether
- the alternants refer to the person
- the person is the addressee
Examples
(Dyirbal, Australia)
Dyirbal has a "mother-in-law language" which is a set of lexical items substituted in the presence of:
- opposite-sex parents-in-law
- opposite-sex children-in-law
- opposite-sex cross-cousins
Sources 3
- Dixon 1972, 32
- Levinson 1983, 90–91
- Comrie 1976b