Khmer Honorifics: Re-emergence and Change after the Khmer Rouge

Abstract

My dissertation analyzes Khmer (Cambodian) language change, particularly its honorific registers, in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge communist regime (1975-1979). I use honorifics as a lens into how Cambodians are coping with the changes they see in their social, economic, and political landscape. After war and isolation in the 1970s and 1980s, Cambodia experienced economic growth after the 1990s, driven by foreign aid development, a booming tourist industry, and international firms seizing opportunities in the now open Cambodian economy. Not everyone in the country is reaping the benefits, however, and Cambodia’s cultural, religious, and educational institutions have still not fully recovered. In spite of the contradictions between rapid development and enduring poverty, political and economic corruption, and a culture of impunity, I argue that newer possibilities for social mobility are driving some Cambodians into reducing their usage of Khmer honorific registers. The trend toward register flattening not only reflects changing demographics of urbanization and the growing middle class; it also reflects people’s dreams and aspirations for upward mobility in the future. My research uncovers a mutual causative relationship between Khmer honorific registers and social status. I contend that as one changes, the other is likely to follow. As we find an emerging middle-class, we also begin to see Khmer honorific registers being reduced toward the middling honorific registers. Or we may see Cambodians using Khmer honorific registers in particular ways in order to aspire toward certain identities. I reconceptualize Peirce’s “diagrammatic icons” (1955) by adding mutual entailment to help describe what I am observing. While diagrammatic icons tend to be static, I bring in a processual and dynamic perspective to show how two objects can in tandem with one another. I also introduce the concept of an expanded “moral circle of honorification” to help us understand why Cambodian Khmer honorific register-use has changed. I draw on Peter Singer’s and Webb Keane’s discussion that, through modernity, people tend to have an ethical scope that extends beyond their kin and fellow villagers (Keane 2015; Singer 1981). I add a linguistic element to this conversation by showing how we can observe this expansion through shifting language-use. Traditionally, in Cambodia, the polite honorific register was usually reserved for higher ranking individuals and those who had more money and power. Today, I argue that the urban middle-class are more likely to have a larger moral circle of honorification as they begin to use the ordinary and polite honorific registers with a greater number of people. They are not, however, using the highest register forms that are concerned with royalty and Buddhist monks. By staying within the middling registers, I argue that upwardly mobile Cambodians are reimagining a more compressed social hierarchy in contemporary Cambodia. In spite of the prevailing trend toward flattening among the urban middle-class, I also reveal underlying tensions, contestations, and debates about how Khmer honorific registers should be used as people with competing sociocultural worldviews dispute the future of their country. By uncovering disagreements about how Cambodians should speak and use honorific registers, I also uncover their competing worldviews and their struggle to (re)define their country’s national identity after war and turmoil. “Are we a country of farmers?” “Are we a Buddhist country?” “Who is owed respect?” Answers to these questions lie in how Cambodians are using Khmer honorific registers.