Long TextExercise 79 of 81

Among the many things that languages encode but rarely make explicit is the precise calibration of social distance between speakers. English, which long ago shed most of its formal apparatus of address - the thou/you distinction having been resolved, by the seventeenth century, in favour of the universal 'you'…

• What limitation of English does the writer highlight at the beginning of the passage?
• How does the Japanese honorific system differ from optional politeness?