The honorific styles of the etnolinguistic communities: An ethnography

Abstract

The purpose of this descriptive-qualitative study with ethnographic design was to explore the extant honorific styles of the identified ethnolinguistic communities. Data from 37 selected participants from the Mandaya, Kagan, and Mansaka Tribes of Tagum City who took part in the KII and FGD interview using validated qualitative interview guide pointed to insight. Based on the analyses of data, the findings reveal the existence of the following appellative honorifics: Kinship, Sub-kinship, Rank, Aged, Professional, No Naming, and Identity Honorifics in the Mandaya, Kagan, and Mansaka Tribes of Tagum City. Moreover, it is also found that bound morpheme markers such as ma, dag, da, pyag, an, gi, on, ka, di, and ba exist in the dialects of the ethnolinguistic communities which describe and define the person’s characteristics and abilities in the honorific styles.