Historical Impoliteness

This edited collection investigates historical linguistic politeness and impoliteness. Although some research has been undertaken uniting politeness and historical pragmatics, it has been sporadic at best, and often limited to traditional theoretical approaches. This is a strange state of affairs, because politeness plays a central role in the social dynamics of language. This collection, containing contributions from renowned experts, aims to fill this hiatus, bringing together cutting-edge research. Not only does it illuminate the language usage of earlier periods, but by examining the past it places politeness today in context. Such a diachronic perspective also affords a further test-bed for current models of politeness. This volume provides insights into historical aspects of language, particularly items regularly deployed for politeness functions, and the social, particularly interpersonal, contexts with which it interacts. It also sheds light on how (social) meanings are dynamically constructed in situ, and probes various theoretical aspects of politeness. Its papers deploy a range of multilingual (e. g. English, Spanish, Italian and Chinese) diachronic data drawn from different genres such as letters, dramas, witch trials and manners books. --Book Jacket.

Exploring a largely uncharted territory of cultural history and linguistic ethnography, Understanding Historical (Im)Politeness offers in-depth analyses and perceptive interpretations of the conveyance of social-relational meaning in times (long) past and across historical cultures. A collection of essays from the pens of authoritative historical (pragma)-linguistics researchers, the volume examines the forms and functions of historical (im)politeness, varying from single utterances and act sequences to fully-fledged (im)polite speech encounters and genres, with a focus on their period- and culture-bound appraisal. What is more, the book sheds light on what is still very dimly seen: diachronic trends in 'relational work' and the cultural-societal factors behind patterns of sociopragmatic change. The volume reviews theoretical concepts, methods and analytical approaches to improve our present-day understanding of the historical understanding of relational practices of the distant as well as the more recent past. Since it includes newly established themes and positions and breaks new ground, this collection furthers considerably the field of historical (im)politeness research. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12:1/2 (2011).

This study concerns the nature of impoliteness in face-to-face spoken interaction. For more than three decades many pragmatic and sociolinguistic studies of interaction have considered politeness to be one central explanatory concept governing and underpinning face-to-face interaction. Politeness' "evil twin" impoliteness has been largely neglected until only very recently. This book, the first of its kind on the subject, considers the role that impoliteness has to play by drawing extracts from a range of discourse types (car parking disputes, army and police training, police-public interactions and kitchen discourse). The study considers the triggering of impoliteness; explores the dynamic progression of impolite exchanges, and examines the way in which such exchanges come to some form of resolution. 'Face' and the linguistic sophistication and manipulation of discoursally expected norms to cause, or deflect impoliteness is also explored, as is the dynamic and sometimes hotly contested nature of an individual's socio-discoursal role.

The Handbook of Historical Pragmatics provides an authoritative and accessible overview of this versatile new field in pragmatics devoted to a diachronic study of language use and human interaction in context. It covers all areas of historical pragmatics from grammaticalization theory to pragmatic entities, such as discourse markers, speech acts and politeness to individual discourse domains from scientific writing to literary discourse. Each contribution, written by a leading specialist, gives a succinct, representative and up-to-date overview of research questions, theories, methods and recent developments in the field.

The volume addresses the enormous imbalance that exists between academic interest in politeness phenomena when compared to impoliteness phenomena. Researchers working with Brown and Levinson's ([1978] 1987) seminal work on politeness rarely focused explicitly on impoliteness. As a result, only one aspect of facework/relational work has been studied in detail. Next to this research desideratum, politeness research is on the move again, with alternative conceptions of politeness to those of Brown and Levinson being further developed. In this volume researchers present, discuss and explore the concept of linguistic impoliteness, the crucial differences and interconnectedness between lay understandings of impoliteness and the academic concept within a theory of facework/relational work, as well as the exercise of power that is involved when impoliteness occurs. The authors offer solid discussions of the theoretical issues involved and draw on data from political interaction, interaction with legally constituted authorities, workplace interaction in the factory and the office, code-switching and Internet practices. The collection offers inspiration for research on impoliteness in many different research fields, such as (critical) discourse analysis, conversation analysis, pragmatics and stylistics, as well as linguistic approaches to studies in conflict and conflict resolution.

The first major study of politeness in Ancient Greece and Rome, from effusive greetings to aggressive humour and friendly banter.

This volume traces the multifaceted concept of manners in the history of English from the late medieval through the early and late modern periods right up to the present day. It focuses in particular on transgressions of manners and norms of behaviour as an analytical tool to shed light on the discourse of polite conduct and styles of writing. The papers collected in this volume adopt both literary and linguistic perspectives. The fictional sources range from medieval romances and Shakespearean plays to eighteenth-century drama, Lewis Carroll’s Alice books and present-day television comedy drama. The non-fictional data includes conduct books, medical debates and petitions written by lower class women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The contributions focus in particular on the following questions: What are the social and political ideologies behind rules of etiquette and norms of interaction, and what can we learn from blunders and other transgressions?

Pragmatics of society takes a socio-cultural perspective on pragmatics and gives a broad view of how social and cultural factors influence language use. The volume covers a wide range of topics within the field of sociopragmatics. This subfield of pragmatics encompasses sociolinguistic studies that focus on how pragmatic and discourse features vary according to macro-sociological variables such as age, gender, class and region (variational pragmatics), and discourse/conversation analytical studies investigating variation according to the activity engaged in by the participants and the identities displayed as relevant in interaction. The volume also covers studies in linguistic pragmatics with a more general socio-cultural focus, including global and intercultural communication, politeness, critical discourse analysis and linguistic anthropology. Each article presents the state-of-the-art of the topic at hand, as well as new research.

From the Middle Ages up to the present day, this book traces politeness in the history of the English language.

Early modern kings adopted a new style of government, Realpolitik, as spelled out in Machiavelli’s writings. Tudor monarchs, well aware of their questionable right to the throne, posed as great dissimulators, similarly to the modern prince who “must learn from the fox and the lion”. This book paints a portrait of a successful politician according to early modern standards. Kingship is no longer understood as a divinely ordained institution, but is defined as goal-oriented policy-making, relying on conscious acting and the theatrical display of power. The volume offers an intriguing discussion on kingship in pragmatic terms, as the strategic face-saving behaviour of Shakespeare’s kings. It also demonstrates how an efficient or inefficient management of the king’s political face could decide his success or failure as a monarch, and how the Renaissance world of Shakespeare’s history plays is combined with modern theories of communication, politeness and face. “Many studies in historical pragmatics or historical stylistics purport to expose language use in social context, but they fall short when measured against this study. The author approaches Shakespeare with concepts from literary studies and linguistic pragmatics, and weaves them together seamlessly with social history. The result is a treasure trove of insights.” – Jonathan Culpeper, Lancaster University “Exploring Machiavellian politics from the perspective of linguistic pragmatics and sociological role theory, Urszula Kizelbach’s study sheds interesting new light on Shakespeare’s stage kings. Her discussion of the strategic uses of polite speech is a particularly welcome addition to our thinking about Shakespeare’s English history plays. A promising new voice in European Shakespeare studies!” – Andreas Höfele, Munich University