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Nepotism and Social Solidarity in Old Kingdom Correspondence: A Case Study on Facework and Discernment Politeness in P. Boulaq 8
Abstract
This article re-examines the Old Kingdom letter P. Boulaq 8 using the methodology of Facework and Discernment Politeness. It will be demonstrated that Facework, namely the analysis of communicative strategies used to redress face-threatening-acts, such as requests, can be successfully applied to the study of Old Kingdom letters and it is a suitable framework of explanation for unclear linguistic and content-related questions. The results show that the language of P. Boulaq 8 contains a high degree of community emphasis and solidary appeals to kin help. Discernment, or socially and culturally imposed communicative rules, regulates the choice of honorifics as replacement of address terms, and indexes expectations of reciprocal social service. Language is an unexplored tool for approaching the social study of the Old Kingdom, and it is argued that it can be used to confirm and enhance the current understanding of the individual and their role within the community in ancient Egypt.
In this paper, we investigate evidence of diachronic variation in patterns of Discernment Politeness in letters written in the ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom ( c . 2300–2200 bce ) and Late Ramesside period ( c . 1099–1069 bce ). We present examples of requests, information acts and honorifics used in these letters, predominantly those letters sent by subordinates to their superiors, to explore how this relationship dynamic is linguistically indexed. Our evidence shows that throughout the Old and New Kingdoms, communicative acts were regulated by behavioural norms dependent on power structures rather than individual volition, with Power being the most dominant social variable. Finally, we argue that Discernment is a key approach for exploring politeness in texts from ancient Egypt, supporting current research on the topic, and that the approach used here for the ancient Egyptian material has wider applicability for diachronic linguistic analyses of remote civilisations which are highly hierarchical.
This article shows that a sociolinguistic analysis of the letters from the Middle Kingdom temple papyri from el-Lahun can be used to identify and further examine superior/subordinate relationships. The temple officials in a subordinate position use reoccurring patterns in their choice of communicative strategies when they need to ask actions from their superior. Besides the more normative and formal modes of e.g. requesting and expressing critique, a specific phenomenon in the letters is the tendency of the subordinates to use expressive and exaggerated language as an elaborate linguistic strategy. This feature appears to be used in situations when the subordinate feels the need to legitimise his appeal whilst simultaneously trying to stay within the unforgiving social decorum. Using the concept of Discernment politeness and the sociolinguistic framework of Normativity, it is shown how this approach can offer additional means for the identification of hierarchical relationships in the epistolary corpora.
"(Pseudo)-Interrogative Sentences and Associated Phrases in Speech Captions in Private Tombs": In this paper, I discuss the (pseudo)-interrogative phrases, both those that are introduced by an interrogative word as well as those that are not. My aim is to provide a synchronic and diachronic study of such sentences and to illustrate a few of their uses in the Reden und Rufe corpus. After a short introduction (section 1), the predicate questions jn and jn-jw are considered in section 2 and adjunct questions built with the interrogative pronouns jšs.t, zy, m and the interrogative adverb ṯn(y) in section 3. Section 3 will further discuss a couple of affirmative and exclamative sentences, which have to be linked with the rhetorical question jšs.t pw A. The fourth and last section before conclusions is devoted to three cases studies relevant for this investigation, i.e. the proclitic particle js, which allows the speaker to distance himself from his words through an ironic statement (4.1), interrogative phrases without interrogative words (4.2), and the particle ḫy hitherto known from letters only (4.3). As a result 50 examples from Old Kingdom mastabas to Late Period tombs have been considered. Even if real (or ordinary) questions (OQs) arose in a few cases, there is a clear majority of rhetorical questions (RQs), which are uninformative and assertive. Both OQs and RQs can be expressed by means of the same syntactic structure, be it predicate questions, adjuncts questions, or interrogative phrases without interrogative words. Some are however preferred for RQs, and vice versa. The RQs as adjunct questions, which are predominant in this text corpus, invoke a predetermined answer from the addressee, being either jnk pw or jnk + nominalized participle. As such they reveal a first rhetorical strategy in which the answer is the counterpart of the question with exactly the same syntactic structure jšs.t pw A – jnk pw, zy pw A – jnk pw, and (j)n-m + participle – jnk + participle). The jšs.t pw A and (j)n-m + participle patterns expose a further rhetorical strategy in which the speaker and/or the addressee is/are objectified.
This study is titled "Discernment and Volition: Two aspects of politeness". It aims at examining two problematic concepts (Discernment and Volition) by presenting how they have been considered in the politeness studies and how they can be enriched with new senses that can enable them to be applicable in all languages. This study consists of seven sections. At the very beginning, it gains deeper insight into the concepts of Discernment and Volition to be critically reconsidered. Then, it compares them to their closest concepts politic and Polite to present the points of similarities and differences between them. After that, both Discernment-dominated and Volitional dominated cultures will be considered. This study also moves on to identifying the elements that constitute Discernment, and those that constitute volitional interactions, as well as clarifying the process of their interpretation within the context. Finally, this study comprehensively introduces the methodology that can work for examining Discernment and Volition, clarifies the process of data collection and illustrates the process of data analysis.
This paper deals with language usage in private and institutional letters from the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods. It analyses the usage of terms of address, greeting formulae and direct and indirect phrasing, drawing on notions of politeness developed by Brown and Levinson. Of particular interest are questions of usage within a temple hierarchy and its implications for professional relationships. For private letters, the case for the appellation of ‘lord’ for women as previously claimed by the author is further substantiated.
This paper presents a critique of politeness theories. As such, it aims to show the shortcomings and defects of the different theoretical foundations and pragmatic models of politeness. This work is hopefully supposed to be significant for the specialists and analysts in the field of pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and conversational analysis, ethnomethodology and communication studies. On the basis of the results of the criticism, it has been concluded that politeness theories suffer from different shortcomings and problems that lessen their efficiency in the successful analysis of interactive communication. Universalism, for instance, is not well-defined by Brown and Levinsons’ theory. Leech’s model is limited to some speech acts. Besides, his model is not clear whether to cover culture-specific as well as cross-cultural aspects of communication.
The Late Ramesside Letters, a corpus of over 70 personal communications written in Late Egyptian, form one of the most complete letter collections from ancient Egypt (c. 1099-1069 BCE). A key feature of ancient Egyptian letter writing is the adherence to the social positions of, and relationships between, the interlocutors, allowing scholars to reconstruct the hierarchical network of individuals directly and indirectly included in the corpus. From this understanding, how can modern scholars discern what was considered to be 'polite' communicative behaviour within these relationships and how can developments in historical politeness help us do this? This article will explore three case studies surrounding different aspects of politeness research: first-order politeness, facework, and discernment politeness in order to explore the phenomenon of 'politeness' in Late Egyptian and reflect on the suitability of current politeness frameworks for the analysis of the Late Ramesside Letters.
Kin selection, which can lead organisms to behave altruistically to their genetic relatives, works differently when—as is often the case in human societies—altruism can be boosted by social pressure. Here I present a model of social norms enforced by indirect reciprocity. In the model there are many alternative stable allocations of rewards (“distributional norms”); a stable norm is stable in the sense that each player is best off following the norm if other players do the same. Stable norms vary widely in how equally they reward players with unequal abilities. In a population of mixed groups (some group members follow one norm, some follow another, and some compromise) with modest within-group coefficients of relatedness, selection within groups favors those who compromise, and selection between groups favors generous generalized reciprocity rather than balanced reciprocity. Thus evolved social norms can amplify kin altruism, giving rise to a uniquely human mode of kin-based sociality distinct from spontaneous altruism among close kin, or cooperation among non-kin.
6th Conference of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, November 5-11, 2007
The present paper contributes to meta pragmatics, by examining the question of how historicity influences the validity of certain modern meta terms that are accepted as ‘neutral’ and ‘scientific’ in pragmatics. We argue that it is fundamental to explore the history and development of such meta terms, and also to study their historically situated meanings, in order to increase the self-reflexivity and rigour of analyses. We analyse the notion of ‘discernment’ as a case study, and we will show that the way in which the Italian equivalent of this term (
discernere
) – which supposedly influenced historical English understandings of ‘discernment’ as well – is used in historical Italian meta discourses contradicts the modern application of this meta term.
This paper explores the relationship between politeness behaviour and rhetoric by examining the case of the historical Chinese pragmatic act of refusal in epistolary discourse. The analysis presented is based on the hypothesis that it is possible to identify culture-specific choices of rhetorical patterns in certain pragmatic and relational acts. Such patterns, in particular in written genres, originate in culturally-situated rhetorical traditions.
Our use of language embodies attitudes as well as referential meanings. ‘Woman's language’ has as foundation the attitude that women are marginal to the serious concerns of life, which are pre-empted by men. The marginality and powerlessness of women is reflected in both the ways women are expected to speak, and the ways in which women are spoken of. In appropriate women's speech, strong expression of feeling is avoided, expression of uncertainty is favored, and means of expression in regard to subject-matter deemed ‘trivial’ to the ‘real’ world are elaborated. Speech about women implies an object, whose sexual nature requires euphemism, and whose social roles are derivative and dependent in relation to men. The personal identity of women thus is linguistically submerged; the language works against treatment of women, as serious persons with individual views.
These aspects of English are explored with regard to lexicon (color terms, particles, evaluative adjectives), and syntax (tag-questions, and related aspects of intonation in answers to requests, and of requests and orders), as concerns speech by women. Speech about women is analyzed with regard to lady : woman, master : mistress, widow : widower , and Mr : Mrs., Miss , with notice of differential use of role terms not explicitly marked for sex (e.g. professional ) as well.
Some suggestions and conclusions are offered for those working in the women's liberation movement and other kinds of social reform; second language teaching; and theoretical linguistics. Relevant generalizations in linguistics require study of social mores as well as of purely linguistic data.
This paper reviews four current approaches to an account of politeness: the social-norm view; the conversational-maxim view; the face-saving view; and the conversational-contract view. A characterization is given for each, followed by a discussion of certain salient aspects of the approach. While none of the views is considered adequate, the face-saving view is seen as the most clearly articulated and most thoroughly worked out, therefore providing the best framework within which to raise the crucial questions about politeness that must now be addressed.
Middle Egyptian introduces the reader to the writing system of ancient Egypt and the language of hieroglyphic texts. It contains twenty-six lessons, exercises (with answers), a list of hieroglyphic signs, and a dictionary. It also includes a series of twenty-five essays on the most important aspects of ancient Egyptian history, society, religion and literature. The combination of grammar lessons and cultural essays allows users to not only read hieroglyphic texts but also to understand them, providing readers with the foundation to understand texts on monuments and to read great works of ancient Egyptian literature in the original text. This second edition contains revised exercises and essays, providing an up to date account of current research and discoveries. New illustrations enhance discussions and examples. These additions combine with the previous edition to create a complete grammatical description of the classical language of ancient Egypt for specialists in linguistics and other fields.
Gender and Politeness challenges the notion that women are necessarily always more polite than men as much of the language and gender literature claims. Sara Mills discusses the complex relations between gender and politeness and argues that although there are circumstances when women speakers, drawing on stereotypes of femininity to guide their behaviour, will appear to be acting in a more polite way than men, there are many circumstances where women will act just as impolitely as men. The book aims to show that politeness and impoliteness are in essence judgements about another's interventions in an interaction and about that person as whole, and are not simple classifications of particular types of speech. Drawing on the notion of community of practice Mills examines the way that speakers negotiate with what they perceive to be gendered stereotypes circulating within their particular group.
The term “Discernment” was originally coined back in the 1980s, where it was first used as an approximate translation of the Japanese term wakimae but later used independently in other contexts and cultures. In this paper, we re-assess its value as an analytical tool for two remote cultures and languages with a severely fragmented and limited textual heri- tage; Late Egyptian and Old English. In spite of their obvious differences, they have in common that their societies were strictly hierarchically ordered. Power was a fixed factor and not negotiable, and thus social movement was generally not possible. Our argumen- tation is based on a careful study of the Late Ramesside Letters, a corpus of personal communication written in Late Egyptian (c. 1099‒1069BCE), and on a range of different constructions (directives, terms of address) in Old English. In these contexts, the concept of Discernment turns out to be a very useful analytical tool to describe the relationship dy- namics in strictly hierarchical societies. It describes (linguistic) behaviour which is socially and situationally adequate and quasi mandatory, and which closely indexes the social relationship between speaker and addressee, as well as the social and linguistic context within which the exchange takes place.
Written in an informal style with engaging examples, this introduction to the study of language in context presents a provocative new approach to communicative practice. Emphasizing the dual status of language as linguistic system and as social fact, William Hanks offers fresh insights into the dynamics of context, the indeterminacy of cultural forms, and the relation between human experience and the making of meaning.Drawing on a broad range of theory and empirical research, Hanks explores the varieties of reflexivity in language, relating them to linguistic structure, textuality, and genres of practice. He shows how the human body both anchors the communicative process and provides a reference point for displaced and mediated speech. Tracing the movement of meaning through social fields and communities, Hanks casts new light on the ways that utterances are fragmented and objectified in social life. Speech emerges as a contingent process in which the production and reception of meaning are tied into multiple dimensions of time and context and history rests on the objectification of practice.Hanks's penetrating readings of classic works in linguistics, philosophy, and social theory are complemented by suggestions for further reading. Within the framework of communicative practice, he integrates elements of formal grammar and semiotics, phenomenology, cultural anthropology, and contemporary sociology. Neither a history nor a summary of the field, Language and Communicative Practices is a critical synthesis of the dialectics of meaning that inform all language and speech.
This volume brings together a selection of papers from the eighteenth ‘Going Romance’ symposium, held at Leiden University, 9–11 December 2004. These papers cover a broad range of topics in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics, and acquisition, in a variety of Romance languages.
P. Berlin 8869, a terminal Old Kingdom letter from the Elephantine archive, records an accusation against a Count Sabni made by Irurehu to the general Merrenakhte. A new transcription and translation of the letter suggests the possible nature of Sabni's alleged crime - illicit interference with Nubian affairs. Textual evidence, changes in Egyptian administration during the late Old Kindom, and archaeological remains in Nubia all support the interpretation of P. Berlin 8869 offered here. The identity of Count Sabni in P. Berlin 8869 is examined, particularly his possible relationship with Sabni, son of Pepinakht-Heqaib.
A companion volume to the third edition of the author’s popular Middle Egyptian, this book contains eight literary works from the Middle Kingdom, the golden age of Middle Egyptian literature. Included are the compositions widely regarded as the pinnacle of Egyptian literary arts, by the Egyptians themselves as well as by modern readers. The works are presented in hieroglyphic transcription, transliteration and translation, accompanied by notes cross-referenced to the third edition of Middle Egyptian. These are designed to give students of Middle Egyptian access to original texts and the tools to practise and perfect their knowledge of the language. The principles of ancient Egyptian verse, in which all the works are written, are discussed, and the transliterations and translations are versified, giving students practice in this aspect of Egyptian literature as well. Consecutive translations are also included for reference and for readers more concerned with Middle Egyptian literature than language.
Making pragmatics accessible to a wide range of students and instructors without dumbing down the content of the field, this text for language professionals: • raises awareness and increases knowledge and understanding of how human beings use language in real situations to engage in social action • fosters the ability to think critically about language data and use • helps readers develop the ability to "do pragmatics"
When is language considered ‘impolite’? Is impolite language only used for anti-social purposes? Can impolite language be creative? What is the difference between ‘impoliteness’ and ‘rudeness’? Grounded in naturally-occurring language data and drawing on findings from linguistic pragmatics and social psychology, Jonathan Culpeper provides a fascinating account of how impolite behaviour works. He examines not only its forms and functions but also people's understandings of it in both public and private contexts. He reveals, for example, the emotional consequences of impoliteness, how it shapes and is shaped by contexts, and how it is sometimes institutionalised. This book offers penetrating insights into a hitherto neglected and poorly understood phenomenon. It will be welcomed by students and researchers in linguistics and social psychology in particular.
During the fifteen years prior to the first publication of this book in 2003, existing models of linguistic politeness generated a huge amount of empirical research. Using a wide range of data from real-life speech situations, this introduction to politeness breaks away from the limitations of those models and argues that the proper object of study in politeness theory must be commonsense notions of what politeness and impoliteness are. From this, Watts argues, a more appropriate model, one based on Bourdieu's concept of social practice, is developed. The book aims to show that the terms 'polite' and 'impolite' can only be properly examined as they are contested discursively. In doing so, 'polite' and 'impolite' utterances inevitably involve their users in a struggle for power. A radically new account of linguistic politeness, the book will appeal to students and researchers in a wide range of disciplines, in linguistics and the social sciences.
The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant is a complex work, for the interpretation of which literary form is crucial. The text is a unity, incorporating diverse styles and genres. It combines two modes of narrative and discourse which are indirectly complementary, being antithetical in their articulation of meaning. This antithesis is also presented through stylistic contrasts within the Tale and by a pervasive use of irony. Although the Tale is concerned with its own writing, the subject matter is not restricted to this. The formal tension between narrative and discourse parallels the dichotomy of awareness which underlies the plot, and which is between the situation as it appears to the protagonist and as it is presented to the audience. Form and content cannot be separated; the literary form which embodies this dichotomy is at one with the creation of the Tale's meaning.
1. D writes: 'The data have been collected by reading through each text and noting all addresses. When all the works of an author had been analysed, they were searched electronically for [the vocative particle] and for the addresses which had turned up in the manual search. Each text has thus been searched twice, and the effect should be close to 100 per cent accuracy' (22-23). I venture to say that one of the reasons D's study is so excellent is precisely because she did in fact read for content all the many texts in her corpus (as opposed to letting a computer do all the work and then, perhaps, thumbing through some pages).
2. The short fourth chapter treats three ancillary matters: factors governing the frequency of address, the position of an address in its sentence, and the use of the vocative particle . As always, D cuts right to the heart of the matter, with such arch comments as, 'In sharp contrast to all other aspects of Greek address usage, the use of is a topic which has received more attention than it deserves' (199; quite otherwise, recently, Athanassakis 1994:131-32). I particularly enjoyed her comments on sentence-initial vocatives (197-99); note that, although different in both approach and conclusions, D here complements the work on Greek addresses by Dik (1995: Ch. 6), who examines the order of phrasal constituents that introduce addresses (rather than the speech itself). The appearance a year apart of two such superb studies of Ancient Greek prose bodes well for the future of classical linguistics.
3. At least in the ancient languages with which I am most familiar, there are extraordinarily few examples of phrases or modes of speaking that one might be inclined to attribute to the actual, spontaneous, nonpoetic speech of an individual person. Melchert (1991) plausibly suggests...
This article examines social interaction in Homer in the light of modern conversation analysis, especially Grice's theory of conversational implicature. Some notoriously problematic utterances are explained in terms of their ‘off-record’ significance. One particular off-record conversation strategy is characterized by Homer as kertomia, and this is discussed in detail. The article focusses on social problems at the end of Achilles' meeting with Priam in Iliad 24, and in particular on the much-discussed word ἐπικερτομέων (24.649).
This is a stylistic analysis of an extract from Dickens’s Great Expectations. The focus is on impoliteness incurred in a convivial setting of a Christmas dinner among low class people. As a result of the analysis of the text, I propose to establish another variety of impoliteness, namely “underpoliteness”. This is impoliteness exercised without malice or spite which occasionally appears to be incidental and a result of socializing habits. Nevertheless, similar to other types of rudeness it creates feelings of discomfort, disharmony and even revenge.The analysis is made at the micro level of single utterances. Occasionally, more than one utterance is taken into consideration for the reconstruction of the speech activity to assist determining the exact degree of offense incurred. The method of analysis depends on positive and negative impoliteness strategies as proposed by Culpeper (1996, 2003). This is complemented with a reversal of Leech’s 1983 politeness maxims.The heart of this paper comprises analysis of interaction in the Christmas dinner in Great Expectations.
One major objection to Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory [Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction, Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 56–311; Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987] raised by Matsumoto [J. Pragmatics 12 (1988) 403; Multilingua 8 (1989) 207; Japanese/Korean Linguistics, vol. 2, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford, pp. 55–67] and Ide [Multilingua 8 (1989) 223] is based on data involving Japanese honorifics. The issue is why honorifics, the use of which Brown and Levinson classifies as a negative politeness strategy (‘Give deference’), should occur in non-FTA utterances. Having shown that Brown and Levinson’s theory does not explain Japanese honorifics satisfactorily, Ide goes so far as to propose an account based on the concept of discernment. The purpose of this article is two-fold: (1) to show that by taking into consideration a salient feature of the Japanese society, namely, its vertical and hierarchical structure, it is possible to propose an account that is consistent with Brown and Levinson’s theory; and (2) to argue against the discernment theory which seems to have gained some recognition. A series of arguments will be advanced to show that an account based on the politeness theory is superior to the discernment account.
In this paper we briefly revisit politeness research influenced by Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory. We argue that this research tradition does not deal with politeness but with the mitigation of face-threatening acts (FTAs) in general. In our understanding, politeness cannot just be equated with FTA-mitigation because politeness is a discursive concept. This means that what is polite (or impolite) should not be predicted by analysts. Instead, researchers should focus on the discursive struggle in which interactants engage. This reduces politeness to a much smaller part of facework than was assumed until the present, and it allows for interpretations that consider behavior to be merely appropriate and neither polite nor impolite. We propose that relational work, the "work" individuals invest in negotiating relationships with others, which includes impolite as well as polite or merely appropriate behavior, is a useful concept to help investigate the discursive struggle over politeness. We demonstrate this in close readings of five examples from naturally occurring interactions.
A cross-cultural study of requests for a pen in Japanese and in American English provides empirical evidence for a common factor, Discernment, which we hypothesize operates in all sociolinguistic systems of politeness. We also propose a complementary factor, Volition, hypothesizing that differences in the weighting of the two factors afford one way to characterize sociolinguistic systems of politeness in different languages. The results of the study further offer empirical support for the theories of Brown and Levinson and Leech.
Middle Egyptian introduces the reader to the writing system of ancient Egypt and the language of hieroglyphic texts. It contains twenty-six lessons, exercises (with answers), a list of hieroglyphic signs, and a dictionary. It also includes a series of twenty-six essays on the most important aspects of ancient Egyptian history, society, religion, literature, and language. Grammar lessons and cultural essays allows users not only to read hieroglyphic texts but also to understand them, providing the foundation for understanding texts on monuments and reading great works of ancient Egyptian literature. This third edition is revised and reorganized, particularly in its approach to the verbal system, based on recent advances in understanding the language. Illustrations enhance the discussions, and an index of references has been added. These changes and additions provide a complete and up-to-date grammatical description of the classical language of ancient Egypt for specialists in linguistics and other fields.
Thesis (doctoral)--University of Stockholm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 230-238).
This dissertation is a cross-linguistic investigation into the structure and interpretation of imperatives and related constructions. We identify universal morphosyntactic principles of imperatives and explain variations in the syntax of imperatives as a consequence of the interaction between the universal principles and the morphosyntactic system of a particular language. Based on these conclusions, we develop a model for the interpretation of imperatives. We show that the syntax of imperatives across languages includes an imperative operator, which is a set of morphosyntactic features. The interaction between a formal universal for the imperative operator and the syntax of a language correctly predicts the cross-linguistic variation in the availability of negative imperatives. We also account for the apparent peculiarity in the syntactic evolution of imperatives in the history of English. The results of our analysis confirm the postulated presence of an imperative operator and provide support for the presence of particular functional projections in the clausal phrase structure in English. We also propose that the morphosyntactic features of the imperative operator have interpretational consequences. We argue that the imperative operator includes a feature that encodes directive force, and another feature that encodes modality of unrealized interpretation. We also argue that subjunctives and infinitivals have an operator whose feature content is in a proper subset relation with that of the imperative operator. By defining the relation of imperatives, subjunctives and infinitivals in this way, we are able to capture the close relation that exists in many languages between these three types of sentences. We also account for the cross-linguistic variation in the syntactic behavior of the imperative subject by developing the idea that the imperative operator selects either an infinitive type or subjunctive type INFL, depending on the language. We define directive illocutionary force as an instruction to the hearer to update a PLAN SET, a set of propositions that specifies the hearer's intentions. Thus, the directive force of the imperative is not a result of inference; it is directly encoded in its logical form.