Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

136 Forbidden Words
second person is; hence its use to the hearer exaggerates the social distance
between the speaker and the hearer. Such exaggeration is a widely used
euphemistic strategy for indicating deference.
Another way for the speaker to indicate deference is to address or name not
the individual hearer-or-named, but to include the hearer-or-named among a
number of people spoken of. For example, in French, the speaker uses the
second person plural as a deferential mode for addressing a singular hearer in
(3), the colloquial form in (4):
These address modes go back to Latin, and perhaps further. From the Middle
Ages until the eighteenth century, the use of thou and ye/you in English was
somewhat comparable to French tu and vous: to oversimplify, thou was used
to God, for in-group solidarity, in contempt, to social inferiors and to animals;
you was a mark of respect. 29 Spanish has tú and vos, used much like their
French counterparts; and also Usted as a more distant polite form derived
from vuestra merced ‘your grace’ (hence the abbreviation Vd), in which
vuestra is the possessive of vos. However, Usted is third person singular
(there is a plural Ustedes). The deferential address form in German uses the
third person plural form, though Sie ‘you’ is orthographically marked by an
initial capital letter. Compare:
Spoken Tamil shows respect by using a third-person plural form when
naming a third-person singular – avaanka and pooranka for motal mantiri in
(7), which is from a radio commentary on an unfolding event.