Etiquette has only marginally attracted the attention of politeness scholars. This article aims to fill a
knowledge gap as it explores the concept in a more systematic way, using nineteenth-century prescriptive metasources from four
countries (Britain, France, Italy and the United States). Etiquette is found to form a complicated, all-encompassing body of
tendentially amoral, mandatory norms, adapting the minutiae of court protocol to private settings. Since the conventions of
etiquette are sequentially structured as scripts with a social gatekeeping function, they can be seen as rituals – that is,
schematic, performative interaction that is emotionally invested. Furthermore, given the combination of mandatory behaviour and a
concern for rank (precedence), etiquette is seen as a manifestation of Discernment, although etiquette privileges non-verbal
aspects of interaction, with less attention for language advice. I consider “etiquette” to be a historically and geographically
situated first-order term for the analytical concept of Discernment: emerging in Europe and in North America in the late
eighteenth century, it is still in use today.
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Cited by (5)
Cited by five other publications
Jucker, Andreas H.
2024. Conduct politeness versus etiquette politeness: a terminological distinction. Journal of Politeness Research 20:1 ► pp. 87 ff.
Kádár, Dániel Z., Gudrun Held & Annick Paternoster
2023. Introduction. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 24:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Paternoster, Annick
2022. Scripts and Lines. In Historical Etiquette, ► pp. 191 ff.
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