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Honorific possession: Power and language in Pohnpei, Micronesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

Elizabeth Keating
Elizabeth Keating
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712-1086ekeating@mail.utexas.edu
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Abstract

Mental categorization schemes, such as noun classification systems, can be productive sites for examining how experience is meaningfully and culturally structured through metaphorical and metonymic associations. Pohnpeian possessive classifiers not only constitute cultural categories of rank and power relations, but dynamically re-sort or re-classify these categories through honorific speech. Linguistic and interactional data are here combined with ethnographic data about Pohnpeian society and cultural beliefs, particularly notions about the meaning and construction of ranked social relationships, to show how micro-interactions which index status are linked both to larger cultural ideologies about power and, metaphorically, to the experiential domain. (Pohnpei, Micronesia, honorifics, status, metaphor, possessive constructions)

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 1997 , pp. 247 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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