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I look with deep gratitude and admiration…” – praising and complimenting in papal speeches

  • Marzena Makuchowska

    Marzena Makuchowska holds the post of a professor of the University of Opole, Poland. Her main area of scholarly interest is linguistic analysis of discourse, including primarily religious discourse. She is the author of monographs, among others, Modlitwa jako gatunek języka religijnego [Prayer as a genre of a religious language] (1998), Od wrogów do braci. Posoborowe zmiany w dyskursie Kościoła katolickiego [From enemies to brethren. Post-Vatican-Council changes in the discourse of the Catholic Church] (2011), as well as more than 60 chapters and articles in books and journals dealing with linguistics.

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Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 18. November 2022

Abstract

Recently, communicating admiration and appreciation in public discourse has become a subject of study since these acts play a very important role in shaping positive social relations not only on a micro scale, but also on a macro one. My goal in this study is to understand how public officials implement their intention to please addressees in an international arena, in contacts between different religious and national communities. In order to do this, 120 papal speeches delivered to representatives of different churches, religions and societies were analysed, identifying individual topics, functions and patterns of these speech acts, as well as their dependence on such parameters as the specifics of the sender, the addressee, the situation, and the discourse. The work demonstrates that the perlocutionary potential of praising and complimenting contained in papal speeches is strengthened by the linguistic exhibiting by the sender of his knowledge about the addressees and focussing attention on them. Furthermore, it becomes more powerful because of the use of lexical and stylistic measures to intensify positive evaluative expressions. The paper is concluded with the postulate of opening linguistic studies on politeness to other public discourses.


Corresponding author: Marzena Makuchowska, Institute of Linguistics, University of Opole, Opole, Poland, E-mail:

About the author

Marzena Makuchowska

Marzena Makuchowska holds the post of a professor of the University of Opole, Poland. Her main area of scholarly interest is linguistic analysis of discourse, including primarily religious discourse. She is the author of monographs, among others, Modlitwa jako gatunek języka religijnego [Prayer as a genre of a religious language] (1998), Od wrogów do braci. Posoborowe zmiany w dyskursie Kościoła katolickiego [From enemies to brethren. Post-Vatican-Council changes in the discourse of the Catholic Church] (2011), as well as more than 60 chapters and articles in books and journals dealing with linguistics.

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Received: 2020-11-04
Accepted: 2021-12-24
Published Online: 2022-11-18
Published in Print: 2023-02-23

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 29.9.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/pr-2020-0048/html
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