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Chapter 12 - Being Polite the Roman Way

Comments about Im/Politeness in the Comedies of Plautus and Terence

from Part IV - Ancient Perceptions on Im/Politeness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2022

By
Luis Unceta Gómez
Edited by
Luis Unceta Gómez  and
Łukasz Berger
Luis Unceta Gómez
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Łukasz Berger
Affiliation:
University of Adam Mickiewicz, Poland
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Summary

Metapragmatic comments, that is, comments that reflect the understandings of speakers or lay observers regarding the ways and aims for which the language is used, are one of the main means of access to native ideas on im/politeness in corpus languages. This chapter analyses the metapragmatic comments on im/politeness that can be identified in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, as a mean to understand the Roman conceptions of im/politeness (that is, the emic perspective of this phenomenon), and the social and moral order underlying those conceptions. This approach facilitates a more detailed and integrated analysis of the speaker’s intentions and/or the interpretation of a particular utterance as polite (or impolite or overpolite) by the addressee, whether or not there are linguistic markers to indicate this intention.

Keywords

PlautusTerenceRoman Comedyim/politenessmetapragmaticssocial orderfirst-order politeness
Type
Chapter
Information
Politeness in Ancient Greek and Latin , pp. 295 - 316
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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