The Kalapalo Affinal Civility Register

Data from narratives, conversations, and didactic speech are employed to describe a multimodal, combinatorial civility register used by speakers of Kalapalo, a central Brazilian Southern Carib language. Practiced among family members, these intimate ritual communications involve complementary grammatical, lexical, discursive, and interactive features, including self‐abnegation and avoidance practices. Examples of conventional usage, and the consequences of register misuse and the collapse of civility are included. Affinal civility enables both specific domestic unions, and more extensive social networks or chains of partnerships within the multilingual Alto Xingu macropolity. The question of the relationship of affinal civility to multilingual macro‐polities more generally is addressed with respect to evidence from Australia.