“When meeting Khun teacher, each time we should pay respect”: Standardizing respect in a Northern Thai classroom

Abstract

This paper examines how Northern Thai (Muang) children are socialized into the discourses and practices of respect in school, a process that indexically links Standard Thai to images of polite and respectful Thai citizenship. Focusing on the socialization of politeness particles, the paper examines how cultural models of conduct are taken up, positioned and reinterpreted in local discourses and classroom activities in a kindergarten classroom. The analysis explores not only how respectful language and conduct are represented in discourses about language use, but also how respect is implicitly tied to certain ways of speaking in situated classroom interactions and correction routines. The data presented here show that, while authoritative and pervasive discourses subordinate the children's Muang ethnolinguistic identity to a Thai national identity, the local entextualization of these discourses in ritual interactions at Pong Noi School also reframes them within a broader classroom gestalt characterized by a thriving local identity and vast vernacular spaces.