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Article published In:
Politeness in and across Historical Europe
Edited by Annick Paternoster, Gudrun Held and Dániel Z. Kádár
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 24:1] 2023
► pp. 68–85

Diplomatic letters from the Republic of Ragusa in the fifteenth century

(Im)politeness strategies in diplomatic epistolary discourse

| University of Sarajevo
In this paper, I study the ways in which (im)politeness strategies are used in letters sent by the Republic of Ragusa to its ambassadors in the Bosnian Kingdom during the fifteenth century. The corpus for this research comprises the Lettere di Levante collection, today kept in the Dubrovnik State Archives, Croatia. I aim to determine the politeness strategies that were used in the letters based on the Brown and Levinson framework. The paper focusses on mitigating strategies used when making requests, expressing condolences, offering congratulations and making threats. The research reveals patterns in conversational and written exchanges, whose goal is to be conventionally polite and diplomatic. This research aims to offer insights into intercultural communication in Europe, inter-European influence, and communication patterns in diplomatic discourse and might be of interest to political scientists, historians and diplomats.
Keywords: condolences, congratulations, epistolary discourse, fifteenth century, politeness formulae, promises, Republic of Ragusa, requests, threats
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Historical context of the diplomatic letters
  • 3.The corpus
  • 4.Methodology and theoretical framework
  • 5.Conventional politeness modalities in diplomatic letters
    • 5.1Mitigation strategies in orders and requests
    • 5.2Formulae of condolences and congratulations
  • 6.Mitigating conventionally impolite forms
    • 6.1Threats
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 23 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00060.lal
References (34)
Sources
Lettere di Levante, Državni arhiv u Dubrovniku.
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Cited by one other publication

Kádár, Dániel Z., Gudrun Held & Annick Paternoster
2023. Introduction. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 24:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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