Indexicality and (im)politeness

This chapter argues that frameworks that address the indexical properties of natural language provide a unified and coherent account of diverse phenomena that are crucial to the study of (im)politeness. Studies of indexicality have typically explored deictic systems, of which honorifics are but a subset (‘social deixis’), but have also addressed the semiotic potential of linguistic resources, i.e. the meanings generated by co-textual and contextual relations. An approach focusing on indexicality therefore provides a paradigm that theorizes the link between linguistic phenomena and typical concerns of (im)politeness research such as self- and other-evaluation and positioning, registers, or sociolinguistic variation. Additionally, this chapter argues that a socioculturally oriented indexical approach can be extended to account for the social currency of normative behaviours, the recognisability or (stereo)typification of social personae or identities, or the transmission and transformation of ideologies of language use.