The article examines the "high" language in a cross-cultural and semiotic aspect to identify the universal and culturally specific features of its manifestation, which determines the novelty and relevance of the research. The questionnaires from representatives of Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brazil, and Senegal, participants in the IX International Conference on Language and Literature, are based on the Bucholz and Hall indexicality categories: 1) open mention of identification categories and labels, and 2) implications and presumptions concerning human identity. Descriptive, typological, and comparative methods of analyzing responses have identified the recognizability of social differences and the respondents’ sensitivity to them. The "high" language manifests itself as a language that lexically and grammatically signals a high status of a speaker through polite forms of address, individual words, titles and suffixes, and correct speech. The impact of 21st-century globalization on most countries and the high status of English for Hong Kong, Thailand and partly Japan, French and Portuguese for the former colonies of Senegal and Brazil are noted. As well as the increasing role of national languages, which serve as the lingua franca for the countries with numerous regional languages such as Brazil and Senegal. The role of non-verbal means in expressing status is great in all represented cultures. The study in comparison with the English culture of the upper classes is being conducted for the first time; it has theoretical and practical significance for the cross-cultural study of the "high" language and status.