How to honor someone in Maithili

A correlation is sought between one politeness strategy used in Maithili, & sociocultural variables including kinship, age, sex, caste, socioeconomic status (SES), & others. Maithili is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in northern Bihar & South Nepal. The strategy examined involves selection of pronominal levels in the second & third persons, & the associated verb agreement marking (P /V level selection). Detailed analysis of 16 Maithili texts indicates that there are five levels of politeness in the second person & two in the third person. The factors that affect their selection are examined, with emphasis placed on the roles of kinship relations & SES. It is shown that factors such as attitude, setting, mood, & educational level are most often responsible for violations of the P/V level selection rules & that these factors therefore have a low place on the politeness hierarchy. 1 Figure, 19 References. B. Annesser Murray