What exactly is the meaning of “honorifics” in linguistics?
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Honorifics in linguistics are not the same thing as honorific titles (like “Your Majesty”.) Those are just noun phrases.
An honorific is a language feature that tells you something about the *social status* of the people in the conversation.
For instance, many European languages have two different pronouns for “you”; you might use one when talking to your boss and a different one when talking to your child, for instance.
Some languages have pretty elaborate systems of honorific speech, like Japanese. (This gets exaggerated sometimes when people translate Japanese to English.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorifics_(linguistics)
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