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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. 86–104

German and Romance civility in contact

Retracing Early Modern European dynamics of polite address through historical foreign language manuals

| Freie Universität Berlin

In this paper, I argue for a systematic study of the role that language contact has played in the development of German, French, Italian and Spanish address systems. While the current state of research clearly points to contact-induced changes in Early Modern European polite address, some important desiderata concerning the precise direction, nature and scope of contact influences remain. Against this background, I present historical foreign language manuals as a promising source for the comparative study of historical European address practices and their development. Through an explorative analysis of metapragmatic comments and model dialogues in selected foreign language manuals, the increasingly dynamic pressures experienced by interlocutors both to distance themselves from one another and to express solidarity come to light, as multi-level address systems emerge and mixed styles of address gain in importance.

Keywords: address, foreign language manuals, German, honorifics, language contact, politeness, Romance languages
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Contact-induced changes of forms of address in Early Modern Europe: Current state of research
    • 2.1Theoretical background
    • 2.2Romance linguistics
    • 2.3Linguistic typology
  • 3.Some critical remarks
    • 3.1On the chronology and direction of contact influences
    • 3.2On the nature and scope of contact influences
  • 4.Towards a comprehensive account of Early Modern contact-induced changes in forms of address
    • 4.1Early Modern foreign language manuals
    • 4.2Metapragmatic insights
    • 4.3Examining socio-pragmatic variation and change through model dialogues
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 6 March 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00061.gen
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