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Talking to God: conceptualizing an alternative politeness approach for the human/divine relationship

  • Kim Ridealgh

    Kim Ridealgh is Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of East Anglia in the UK. Her current research interests are in historical politeness, historical pragmatics, and relationship dynamics and she specializes in Late Egyptian. Her recent publications include special issues on historical politeness with the Journal of Politeness Research (2016) and the Journal of Historical Pragmatics (2019).

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Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 17. Oktober 2020

Abstract

The human/divine relationship is a dynamic that does not easily fit into existing politeness research frameworks and approaches. This paper will look to explore this relationship further, within the ancient Egyptian Late Ramesside Letters (c. 1099-1069 BCE), in order to explore the limitations of facework and ritual in fully exploring the phenomenon, and offer an alternative approach - the ‘community-embedded’ model - which expands on principles from both facework and ritual, as well as collective prayer. The use here of the ‘community-embedded’ approach allows for the analysis of the impact of utterances to and involving God (the divine entity who assumes this role in the communicative interaction) within wider social networks, and how this supports simultaneous relationship maintenance between humans, God, and larger networks specific to the culture under review.

About the author

Kim Ridealgh

Kim Ridealgh is Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of East Anglia in the UK. Her current research interests are in historical politeness, historical pragmatics, and relationship dynamics and she specializes in Late Egyptian. Her recent publications include special issues on historical politeness with the Journal of Politeness Research (2016) and the Journal of Historical Pragmatics (2019).

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the editors and peer reviewers for their valuable comments in further improving this paper.

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Received: 2020-06-09
Accepted: 2020-06-12
Published Online: 2020-10-17
Published in Print: 2021-02-26

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 21.1.2026 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/pr-2020-0027/pdf
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