By using Cantonese honorifics to address each other, the girls and their peers are introducing a set of
cultural practices signified in the Cantonese language into the way they construct social relationships with
one another, for example, in expressing politeness or affection and highlighting the gender and relative
age of one's interlocutor. The honorific suffixes might also be used for other rhetorical purposes, such as
adding descriptive modifier to one's addressee (e.g., eccentricity as in example E), and accentuating the
gender status (as in example C where CHoCoLaTe might be using che che to avoid being mistaken for a
homosexual indication in kissing sure goodbye, and example F where gor is attached to the addressee's
name to emphasize the male/macho talk that is going on at the time).8
Hence, Cantonese honorifics serve
as a rhetorical device in code-switching both to signal an alternative system of social relational practices
and for the additional semantic features that they provide.