Ordering a Disordered World through Language: Metapragmatic Dissonance and the “Misreading” of an Indexical Relationship

Abstract

AbstractMainland Japanese middle-school teachers working on Chichijima Island encounter an address pattern they describe as unusual. While students address teachers using last name and honorific title, teachers call students by their first names only. Some of the teachers experience the indexical relationship between the exchanged forms as a nonreciprocal disjuncture, describing it as “too hierarchical;” others experience it as a reciprocal disjuncture, saying it creates a “too close” atmosphere in the school. Many who do not fall back on the culture-internal stereotype are teachers who struggle to maintain authority in the classroom. Here, these teachers’ “misreading” of the indexical meanings associated with the address forms invokes a trope of misunderstanding where a theoretical repair is summoned as a means to fix a problem. Silverstein’s model of indexical orders provides a means to understand the metapragmatic dissonance that characterizes teachers’ discourse.