Honorific

An honorific title is a word or expression with connotations conveying esteem or respect when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term "honorific" is used in a more specific sense to refer to an honorary academic title. It is also often conflated with systems of honorific speech in linguistics, which are grammatical or morphological ways of encoding the relative social status of speakers.

Typically, honorifics are used as a style in the grammatical third person, and as a form of address in the second person. Use in the first person, by the honored dignitary, is uncommon or considered very rude and egotistical. Some languages have anti-honorific (despective or humilific) first person forms (expressions such as "your most humble servant" or "this unworthy person") whose effect is to enhance the relative honor accorded to the person addressed.

Modern English honorifics

The most common honorifics in modern English are usually placed immediately before a person's name. Honorifics which can be used (both as style and as form of address) include, in the case of a male, "Mr" (irrespective of marital status), and in the case of a female the honorific will depend on her marital status: if the female is unmarried, it is "Miss", if she is married it is "Mrs", and if her marital status is unknown, or it is not desired to specify it, "Ms". Someone who does not want to express a gender with their honorific may occasionally use Mx.

Honorifics (linguistics)

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.