Changing Scholarly Representations of the Tongan Honorific Lexicon

Abstract

Language ideology about Tongan lexical honorifics, or lea faka 'eiki, “chiefly language”, has changed over the past 200 years. The number of levels of honorification described, and some of the specific lexical items associated with each level, have remained stable. However, under the impact of British colonization through Methodist missionization, the conceptualization of who is indexed by the use of honorifics has changed significantly. Most notably, the Tui'i Tonga, who was both a sacred and a secular leader, has been replaced by the King as the target of the higher level of honorification. The honorific system was caught up ideologically in a shift from a Tongan traditional hierarchy to a Tongan secular modern nation state hierarchy. Ideologically, this shift was heavily influenced by the European Protestant concern, to create a separation of church and state, which happened elsewhere as well—e.g., Korea and Japan.