HISTORICAL POLITENESS Hausarbeit
HISTORICAL POLITENESS
IN GREAT BRITAIN
Eva Marín Caballero
Historical Pragmatics
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Wintersemester 2013/2014
Table of contents
1. Introduction
2. Politeness and Face-work: Background information
-
Definitions
-
A face-based model: Brown and Levinson (1987)
-
Politeness vs. Impoliteness
3. Politeness in the history of English
-
From positive to negative politeness culture
-
Politeness in Old English
-
Politeness in Middle English: curteisie
-
Politeness in Early-Modern English
-
Politeness in the 18th century English
4. Conclusions
5. Bibliography
1. Introduction
The term ‘politeness’ has different uses. It is not so odd to hear this word in our everyday language, but it can also be a technical term in scholarly work in pragmatics.
If we look at the term concerning the second meaning, we can easily find out that linguistic politeness has been little studied, and therefore we do not have much information. It is a topic where there is still research to be done.
The present paper has, as aim, an explanation and a summary of the development of the
Linguistic Politeness in Great Britain. Thus, it is necessary, not only to look back at the work of some linguists as Brown and Levinson or Jucker, but also to target some literary works, such as “Canterbury Tales”.
I will provide, first, some basic understanding to refresh our knowledge about the concept ‘politeness’ and ‘face work’ , an issue extensively developed by Brown and
Levinson. We will also see the different strategies that are used to save the positive and negative faces of the interlocutor.
Then, I will take a look at the work of the University of Northern Arizona and of Jucker, who writes about the development of the linguistic politeness in Great Britain and analyzes some literary data to support his conclusions.
2. Politeness and Face-work: Background information
Definitions
What is understood by ‘politeness’? In the traditional definition, politeness
IN GREAT BRITAIN
Eva Marín Caballero
Historical Pragmatics
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Wintersemester 2013/2014
Table of contents
1. Introduction
2. Politeness and Face-work: Background information
-
Definitions
-
A face-based model: Brown and Levinson (1987)
-
Politeness vs. Impoliteness
3. Politeness in the history of English
-
From positive to negative politeness culture
-
Politeness in Old English
-
Politeness in Middle English: curteisie
-
Politeness in Early-Modern English
-
Politeness in the 18th century English
4. Conclusions
5. Bibliography
1. Introduction
The term ‘politeness’ has different uses. It is not so odd to hear this word in our everyday language, but it can also be a technical term in scholarly work in pragmatics.
If we look at the term concerning the second meaning, we can easily find out that linguistic politeness has been little studied, and therefore we do not have much information. It is a topic where there is still research to be done.
The present paper has, as aim, an explanation and a summary of the development of the
Linguistic Politeness in Great Britain. Thus, it is necessary, not only to look back at the work of some linguists as Brown and Levinson or Jucker, but also to target some literary works, such as “Canterbury Tales”.
I will provide, first, some basic understanding to refresh our knowledge about the concept ‘politeness’ and ‘face work’ , an issue extensively developed by Brown and
Levinson. We will also see the different strategies that are used to save the positive and negative faces of the interlocutor.
Then, I will take a look at the work of the University of Northern Arizona and of Jucker, who writes about the development of the linguistic politeness in Great Britain and analyzes some literary data to support his conclusions.
2. Politeness and Face-work: Background information
Definitions
What is understood by ‘politeness’? In the traditional definition, politeness
Bibliography: Bax, Marcel and Dániel Z. Kádár (eds.), (2012) Understanding Historical (Im)Politeness: Relational linguistic practice over time and across cultures John Benjamins Publishing, Jul 9, 2008. Jucker, Andreas. (2010) In curteisie was set ful muchel hir lest” Politeness in Middle English Brown, R. and A. Gilman (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In Style in Language, T.A Brown P. and Levinson S. (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Grice, H.P. (1975) Logic and Conversation. In Cole P. and J.L. Morgan (eds.) Syntax and Semantics vol 3: Speech Acts Grundy P. (1995) Doing Pragmatics. London: Arnold. Labov, W. (1972) Rules for ritual insults. In D. Sudnow (ed.) Studies in Social Interaction Lakoff, R. (1973) The logic of politeness; or minding your p 's and q 's. In Papers from the ninth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society Leech, G. (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. Levinson, S. (1983) Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, Jenny (1995) Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics, London: Longman. Yule, George (1996) Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.