"Direct" and "indirect" communicative acts in semiotic perspective

Purportedly universal instrumentalist views of language functions are critically reviewed, whether conceived more narrowly in respect of denotational (referential and predicational) uses or more widely in respect of interpersonal (pragmatic) goals or effects. In both these realms the concept of discernible degrees of "directness" vs. "indirectness" rests on various folk- or ethnometalinguistic ideas of how language form can be iconic with an autonomous realm of that which it stands for, a projective semantic or pragmatic pictorialism of questionable utility in cross-cultural empirical investigation. Rather, through the analysis of Worora (Northern Kimberley, Australia) examples of social indexicality in the realms of 'politeness' and 'avoidance/taboo', it is seen that the interaction of pragmatic (indexical) norms for contextualizing language and the local culture's ethno-metapragmatics determines the equivalent of what Western ethno-metapragmatics understands in terms of "direct" and "indirect." (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.