Politeness strategies in Late Middle English women’s mystical writing
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Fumiko Yoshikawa
Abstract
This paper analyzes Late Middle English women’s mystical writing from the viewpoint of the Politeness Theory proposed by Brown & Levinson (1987). The main focuses of this study are address forms, requests and commands occurring in direct speech in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love and The Book of Margery Kempe. These texts are usually assigned to the same genre, mystical writing, but they have some differences in the strategies of building the structure of their text to communicate their intention of writing to the readers. By the analysis of these texts, we examine what types of politeness strategies are frequently used in the texts by the authors or others in direct speech in order to reduce the effect of face-threatening acts.
Abstract
This paper analyzes Late Middle English women’s mystical writing from the viewpoint of the Politeness Theory proposed by Brown & Levinson (1987). The main focuses of this study are address forms, requests and commands occurring in direct speech in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love and The Book of Margery Kempe. These texts are usually assigned to the same genre, mystical writing, but they have some differences in the strategies of building the structure of their text to communicate their intention of writing to the readers. By the analysis of these texts, we examine what types of politeness strategies are frequently used in the texts by the authors or others in direct speech in order to reduce the effect of face-threatening acts.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgements vii
- List of abbreviations ix
- Editors’ introduction xi
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Part I. Etymology
- Etymology and the OED 3
- On the etymological relationships of wank , swank , and wonky 21
- Base etymology in the historical thesauri of deverbatives in English 29
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Part II. Semantic fields
- The global organization of the English lexicon and its evolution 65
- Repayment and revenge 85
- Semantic change in the domain of the vocabulary of Christian clergy 99
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Part III. Word-formation
- Abstract noun ‘suffixes’ and text type in Old English 119
- The lexicalisation of syncope 133
- Oriented - ingly adjuncts in Late Modern English 147
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Part IV. Textlinguistics, text types, politeness
- Historical text linguistics 167
- Repetitive and therefore fixed? 189
- Politeness strategies in Late Middle English women’s mystical writing 209
- A diachronic discussion of extenders in English remedies found in the Corpus of Early English Recipes (1350–1850) 223
- “It is with a trembling hand I beg to intrude this letter” 237
- Genre analysis 255
- Index 267
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgements vii
- List of abbreviations ix
- Editors’ introduction xi
-
Part I. Etymology
- Etymology and the OED 3
- On the etymological relationships of wank , swank , and wonky 21
- Base etymology in the historical thesauri of deverbatives in English 29
-
Part II. Semantic fields
- The global organization of the English lexicon and its evolution 65
- Repayment and revenge 85
- Semantic change in the domain of the vocabulary of Christian clergy 99
-
Part III. Word-formation
- Abstract noun ‘suffixes’ and text type in Old English 119
- The lexicalisation of syncope 133
- Oriented - ingly adjuncts in Late Modern English 147
-
Part IV. Textlinguistics, text types, politeness
- Historical text linguistics 167
- Repetitive and therefore fixed? 189
- Politeness strategies in Late Middle English women’s mystical writing 209
- A diachronic discussion of extenders in English remedies found in the Corpus of Early English Recipes (1350–1850) 223
- “It is with a trembling hand I beg to intrude this letter” 237
- Genre analysis 255
- Index 267
