Startseite Greeting in Roman comedy: register and (im)politeness
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

Greeting in Roman comedy: register and (im)politeness

  • Łukasz Berger EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 21. Dezember 2020
Veröffentlichen auch Sie bei De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

This article investigates multiple pragmatic facets of Latin greeting as depicted in the corpus of Roman comedy (Plautus, Terence). To this end, different frameworks are combined, including Conversation Analysis, Speech Act Theory, and the most prominent (Im)politeness Theories. The complexity of the greeting phenomenon is first demonstrated by identifying its position inside the opening section of the dialogue with possible reductions, elaborations, and substitutions. Thus a heterogeneous group of greeting tokens is retrieved from the comedy corpus, which, furthermore, fit the speech-act theoretical description of the greeting as a behabitative (Austin), expressive act (Searle) or acknowledgment (Bach and Harnish). Moreover, the paper briefly signalizes the contact-oriented (phatic) functions of the salutation ritual as access display (Shiffrin) or its use as a mechanism of (re)producing the social order (Schegloff). The main part of the investigation, however, is devoted to the greeting formulae and their linguistic variation in Plautus and Terence. After briefly presenting the classical model of (im)politeness (Brown and Levinson), the paper relates the speech-act formulation of the expressions to positive- or negative-politeness strategies. Finally, the article applies the frame-based analysis of the politeness’ formulaic language, as proposed by Terkourafi. The dialogue openings are classified according to their broader extralinguistic context (e.g. participants, temporal setting, the reason for the encounter) into several situational frames. In the last section of the paper, the (im)politeness value of the greeting expressions is revised in relation to their adequacy to a given situation type. In result, some instances of using the formulae inappropriately (i.e., out of frame) are given, which demonstrate the complex interpersonal dynamics of the verbal interaction depicted by Plautus and Terence.


Corresponding author: Łukasz Berger, Institute of Classical Philology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

The paper is a part of the research project “Conversational Structure and Im/politeness in the Roman Comedy” financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MNiSW) – Mobility Plus IV, No. 1314/MOB/IV/2015/0. I express my most sincere gratitude to my project supervisor, Professor Luis Unceta Gómez, for all his enriching suggestions and revisions.

References

Austin, John L. 1962. How to do things with words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Bach, Kent & Robert M. Harnish. 1979. Linguistic communication and speech acts. Cambridge: MIT Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Barrios-Lech, Peter. 2016. Linguistic interaction in Roman comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781316416983Suche in Google Scholar

Barsby, John (ed.). 2001. Terence. Comedies, vol. 1–2. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Berger, Łukasz. 2016a. Escenas de bienvenida en las comedias de Plauto. Scripta Classica 13. 65–84.Suche in Google Scholar

Berger, Łukasz. 2016b. Introducing the first topic slot in Plautine dialogues. Roczniki Humanistyczne 64(3). 89–110. https://doi.org/10.18290/rh.2016.64.3-5.Suche in Google Scholar

Berger, Łukasz. 2017a. Bendecir para saludar en Plauto. Redistribución de la función pragmática. Emerita 85(2). 261–287. https://doi.org/10.3989/emerita.2017.13.1626.Suche in Google Scholar

Berger, Łukasz. 2017b. Estrategias de la cortesía positiva en la apertura diálogica en Plauto y Terencio. Revista de estudios latinos: RELat 17. 11–35.Suche in Google Scholar

Berger, Łukasz. 2017c. The old man and linguistic politeness in the comedies of Plautus. Symbolae Philologorum Posnaniensium Graecae et Latinae 27(3). 249–273. https://doi.org/10.14746/sppgl.2017.xxvii.3.14.Suche in Google Scholar

Berger, Łukasz. 2018. Negotiating the interactional meaning on the Roman stage: Tokens of phaticity. In A. Gałkowski & M. Kopytowska (eds.), Current perspectives in semiotics. Text, genres, and representations, 217–237. Berlin: Peter Lang.Suche in Google Scholar

Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511813085Suche in Google Scholar

Cabrillana, Concepción. 2019. Expresiones directivas con verbos de uso copulativo en la comedia latina. Glotta 95(1). 8–25. https://doi.org/10.13109/glot.2019.95.1.8.Suche in Google Scholar

Coulmas, Florian. 1979. On the sociolinguistic relevance of routine formulae. Journal of Pragmatics 3(3/4). 239–266. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(79)90033-x.Suche in Google Scholar

De Melo, Wolfgang (ed.). 2011–2013. Plautus. Comedies, vol. 1–5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Denizot, Camille & Olga Spevak. 2017. Pragmatics in Latin and ancient Greek. An introduction. In Olga Speval & Camille Denizot (eds.), Pragmatic approaches to Latin and ancient Greek, 1–13. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.190.01speSuche in Google Scholar

Dickey, Eleanor. 2002. Latin forms of address. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780199242870.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar

Dickey, Eleanor. 2016. Politeness in ancient Rome: Can it help us evaluate modern politeness theories?. Journal of Politeness Research 12(2). 197–220. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2016-0008.Suche in Google Scholar

Duranti, Alessandro. 1997. Universal and culture‐specific properties of greetings. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 7(1). 63–97. https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.1997.7.1.63.Suche in Google Scholar

Echols, Edward C. 1950. The quid-greeting in Plautus and Terence. The Classical Journal 45(4). 188–190.Suche in Google Scholar

Eelen, Gino. 2001. A critique of politeness theories. Manchester: St. Jerome.Suche in Google Scholar

Ferguson, Charles A. 1976. The structure and use of politeness formulas. Language in Society 5(2). 137–151. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500006989.Suche in Google Scholar

Ferri, Rolando. 2009. Politeness in Latin comedy. Some preliminary thoughts. Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 61. 15–28.Suche in Google Scholar

Fillmore, Charles. 1977. Scenes-and-frames semantics. In Antonio Zampolli (ed.), Linguistic structures processing, 55–81. Amsterdam: North Holland.Suche in Google Scholar

Fillmore, Charles. 1982. Frame semantics. In The Linguistic Society of Korea (ed.), Linguistics in the morning calm: Selected Papers from SICOL, 111–138. Seoul: Hanshin.10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00424-7Suche in Google Scholar

Forberg, Martin. 1913. De salutandi formulis Plautinis et Terentianis. Weidae Turingorum: Thomas et Hubert.Suche in Google Scholar

Goffman, Erving. 1955. On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry 18(3). 213–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1955.11023008.Suche in Google Scholar

Goffman, Erving. 1963. Behavior in public places. New York: Glencoe.Suche in Google Scholar

Goffman, Erving. 1971. Relations in public. Macrostudies of the public order. New York: Basic Books.Suche in Google Scholar

Hall, Jon. 1998. The deference-greeting in Roman society. Maia 50(3). 413–426.Suche in Google Scholar

Haugh, Michael. 2007. The discursive challenge to politeness research: An interactional alternative. Journal of Politeness Research 3. 295–317. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr.2007.013.Suche in Google Scholar

Hoffmann, Maria E. 1983. Conversation openings in the comedies of Plautus. In Harm Pinkster (ed.), Latin linguistics and linguistic theory, 217–226. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.12.20hofSuche in Google Scholar

Laver, John. 1975.  Communicative function of phatic communion. In Kendon Adam, Richard M. Harris & Mary R. Key (eds.), Organization of behavior in face-to-face interaction, 215–238. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783110907643.215Suche in Google Scholar

Laver, John. 1981. Linguistic routines and politeness in greeting and parting. In Florian Coulmas (ed.), Conversational routine, 289–304. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783110809145.289Suche in Google Scholar

Leech, Geoffrey N. 2014. The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341386.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar

Letessier, Piere. 2000. La salutation chez Plaute. Adaptation ludique d’un rituel social. Lalies 20. 151–163.Suche in Google Scholar

Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511813313Suche in Google Scholar

Locher, Miriam A. & Richard J. Watts. 2005. Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture 1(1). 9–33. https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2005.1.1.9.Suche in Google Scholar

Malinowski, Bronisław. 1923. The problem of meaning in primitive languages. In Charles K. Ogden & Ivory A. Richards (eds.), The meaning of meaning, 296–336. New York: Harvest Book.Suche in Google Scholar

Mills, Sara. 2003. Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511615238Suche in Google Scholar

Monserrat Roig, Catalina. 2005. Anàlisi pragmàtica i conversacional dels vocatius a les comedies plautines. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona dissertation [Pragmatic and conversational analysis of vocatives in the comedies by Plautus].Suche in Google Scholar

Müller, Roman. 1997. Sprechen und Sprache. Dialoglinguistische Studien zu Terenz. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter.Suche in Google Scholar

Pavlidou, Theodossia-Soula. 2014. Phases in discourse. In Klaus P. Schneider & Anne Barron (eds.), Pragmatics of discourse, vol. 3, 353–383. Berlin & Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110214406-014Suche in Google Scholar

Poccetti, Paolo. 2010. Greeting and farewell expressions as evidence for colloquial language: Between literary and epigraphical texts. In Eleanor Dickey & Chahoud Anna (eds.), Colloquial and literary Latin, 100–126. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511763267.008Suche in Google Scholar

Risselada, Rodie. 1993. Imperatives and other directive expressions in Latin. A study in the pragmatics of a dead language. Amsterdam: Brill.10.1163/9789004408975Suche in Google Scholar

Roesch, Sophie. 2007. Les débuts de dialogue dans la comédie et la tragédie latines. In Bruno Bureau & Christian Nicolas (eds.), Commencer et finir dans les littératures antiques (Colloque de Lyon, 29–30 sept. 2006), 207–222. Lyon: Université Jean Moulin.Suche in Google Scholar

Sacks, Harvey. 1975. Everyone has to lie. In Ben G. Blount & Mary Sanches (eds.), Sociocultural dimensions of language use, 57–79. New York: Academic Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1968. Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist 70(6). 1075–1095. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1968.70.6.02a00030.Suche in Google Scholar

Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1986. The routine as achievement. Human Studies 9(2). 111–151. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00148124.Suche in Google Scholar

Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1991. Reflections on talk and social structure. In Deirdre Boden & Donald H. Zimmerman (eds.), Talk and social structure: Studies in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, 44–70. Berkeley: University of California Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007. Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511791208Suche in Google Scholar

Schiffrin, Deborah. 1977. Opening encounters. American Sociological Review 42(5). 679–691. https://doi.org/10.2307/2094858.Suche in Google Scholar

Searle, John R. 1969. Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139173438Suche in Google Scholar

GiadaSorrentino. Forthcoming. Conversational openings and politeness in Menander. Towards an integrated pragmatic approach to Menandrean dialogue. In Luis Unceta Gómez & Łukasz Berger (eds.), Doing Im/politeness in ancient Greek and Latin.Suche in Google Scholar

Terkourafi, Marina. 2002. Politeness and formulaicity: Evidence from Cypriot Greek. Journal of Greek Linguistics 3(1). 179–201. https://doi.org/10.1075/jgl.3.08ter.Suche in Google Scholar

Terkourafi, Marina. 2005. Beyond the micro-level in politeness research. Journal of Politeness Research 1. 237–262. https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2005.1.2.237.Suche in Google Scholar

Unceta Gómez, Luis. 2012. Cuando los sentimientos irrumpen: valores expresivos de las interjecciones primarias en las comedias de Plauto. In Gregoris Rosario López (ed.), Estudios sobre teatro romano: el mundo de los sentimientos y su expresión, 347–395. Zaragoza: Libros Pórtico.Suche in Google Scholar

Unceta Gómez, Luis. 2016. Congratulations in Latin comedy: Types and functions. Journal of Politeness Research 12(2). 267–290. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2016-0005.Suche in Google Scholar

Unceta Gómez, Luis. 2018. Gli studi sulla (s)cortesia linguistica in latino. Possibilità di analisi e proposte per il futuro. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 56(2). 9–37.Suche in Google Scholar

Van Dijk, Teun A. 1977. Context and cognition: Knowledge frames and speech act comprehension. Journal of Pragmatics 1(3). 211–231.10.1016/0378-2166(77)90035-2Suche in Google Scholar

Ventola, Eija. 1979. The structure of casual conversation in English. Journal of Pragmatics 3(3/4). 267–298. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(79)90034-1.Suche in Google Scholar

Watts, Richard J. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511615184Suche in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2020-12-21
Published in Print: 2020-11-27

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 28.10.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/joll-2020-2012/html
Button zum nach oben scrollen