Cover not available
Part of
Politeness in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Edited by Annick Paternoster and Susan Fitzmaurice
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 299] 2019
► pp. 107–144

Chapter 3
Politeness and evaluative adjectives in Italian turn-of-the-century etiquette books (1877–1914)

| Università della Svizzera italiana

This study examines evaluative adjectives and politeness evaluators in 9 popular etiquette books published in turn-of-the-century Italy between 1877–1914, with the aim to determine the values that are involved in the judgement of behaviour. Using Appraisal Theory (Martin & White 2005), I group positive evaluative adjectives in the following semantic sets: Normality, Capacity, Tenacity, Veracity and Politeness. Politeness comprises the subsets Conformity, Affection, Goodness and Pleasure. The paper establishes diversity and frequencies within the various lexical sets, which are used to design a conceptual map. The map shows the dominating ideological weight of etiquette and its core values of Normality and Conformity, which point towards intensely regulated behaviour in a large number of contexts.

Keywords: etiquette, conduct books, Italy, nineteenth century, evaluative adjectives, values, morality, politeness evaluator, metalabel, conceptual map, appraisal, discernment
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Etiquette books
  • 3.Sources
  • 4.Martin and White’s appraisal theory: Evaluative language and values
  • 5.Method and data collection
  • 6.Social Esteem
    • 6.1Normality
    • 6.2Capacity
    • 6.3Tenacity
  • 7.Social Sanction
    • 7.1Veracity
    • 7.2Politeness
      • Synonyms of cortese
      • Conformity
      • Affection
      • Goodness
      • Pleasure
  • 8.Conceptual map
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 10 January 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.299.04pat
References
Alfonzetti, Giovanna
2016 “Mi lasci dire”. La conversazione nei galatei. Rome: Bulzoni.Google Scholar
Arslan, Antonia
2013 [1998] Dame, galline e regine. La scrittura femminile italiana fra ’800 e ’900. Milan: Guerini e Associati.Google Scholar
Banti, Alberto M.
1996 Storia della borghesia italiana. L’età liberale. Rome: Donzelli.Google Scholar
Benatti, Silvia, and Roberto Cicala
(eds.) 2001 La Marchesa Colombi: una scrittrice e il suo tempo: atti del convegno internazionale, Novara, 26 maggio 2000. Novara: Interlinea.Google Scholar
Bergando, Alfonso
1882 [1881] Sulle convenienze sociali e sugli usi dell’alta società. Milan: Fratelli Dumolard.Google Scholar
Botteri, Inge
1999 Galateo e galatei. La creanza e l’instituzione della società nella trattatistica tra antico regime e stato liberale. Rome: Bulzoni.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
1987 [1978] Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Caffi, Claudia
(ed.) 1984 Metapragmatics. Special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics 8(4): 433–592. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998 “Metapragmatics.” In Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics, ed. by Jacob L. Mey, 581–586. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Cattadori, Francesco
1839 Novellette e norme per contenersi civilmente. Libro di lettura proposto per uso dei giovanetti. Casalmaggiore: Bizzarri.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan
2011 Impoliteness. Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 “The Influence of Italian Manners on Politeness in England 1550–1620.” Journal of Historical Pragmatics 18 (2): 195–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curtin, Michael
1987 Propriety and Position: a Study of Victorian Manners. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Degortes, Elena
2012 I galatei fascisti. Master’s Thesis, Università degli Studi di Sassari. Retrieved from [URL]
Fanfani, Pietro
1884 Nuovo Vocabolario dei sinonimi della lingua italiana. Nuova edizione con duemila aggiute per cura di G. Frizzi. Milan: P. Carrara.Google Scholar
Fanning, Ursula
2002 Gender Meets Genre: Woman as Subject in the Fictional Universe of Matilde Serao. Dublin and Portland, Oregon: Irish Academic Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, Mary R.
1992 Models for Manners: Etiquette Books and Etiquette in Nineteenth Century France. New York: New York University.Google Scholar
Frau, Ombretta, and Cristina Gragnani
2011 Sottoboschi letterari. Sei case studies tra Otto e Novecento. Mara Antelling, Emma Boghen Conigliani, Evelyn, Anna Franchi, Jolanda, Flavia Steno. Florence: Firenze University Press.Google Scholar
Freeman, James B.
2005 Acceptable Premises: An Epistemic Approach to an Informal Logic Problem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fuoli, Matteo
2018. “A Stepwise Method for Annotating Appraisal.” Functions of Language 25 (2): 229–258.
Fuoli, Matteo, and Charlotte Hommerberg
2015 “Optimizing Transparency, Reliability and Replicability: Annotation Principles and Inter-Coder Agreement in the Quantification of Evaluative Expressions.” Corpora 10 (3): 315–349. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold
1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Gibus del Mattino (pseud. of Matilde Serao)
1900 Saper vivere (Norme di buona creanza). Napels: Tipografia Cav. Aurelio Tocco.Google Scholar
Gioja, Melchiorre
1802 Nuovo galateo. Milan: Pirotta e Maspero.Google Scholar
1820 Nuovo galateo di Melchiorre Gioja, autore del Trattato Del merito e delle ricompenso. Milan: Pirotta.Google Scholar
Haidt, Jonathan
2012 The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Haidt, Jonathan, and Jesse Graham
2007 “When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals May Not Recognize.” Social Justice Research 20: 98–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Held, Gudrun
2010 “ Supplica la mia parvidade…Petitions in Medieval Society – a Matter of Ritualised or First Reflexive Politeness?” Journal of Historical Politeness 11 (2): 194–218.Google Scholar
Hosker, Lucy
2016 “The Structures of Conduct Literature in Post-Unification Italy. La Marchesa Colombi’s La gente per bene, Anna Vertua Gentile’s Come devo comportarmi?, and Matilde Serao’s Saper vivere .” In Conduct Literature for and about Women in Italy, 1470–1900: Prescribing and Describing Life, ed. by Helena Sanson and Francesco Lucioli, 159–183. Paris: Classiques Garnier.Google Scholar
Hübler, Alex, and Ulrich Busse
2012 “Introduction.” In Investigations into the Meta-Communicative Lexicon of English. A Contribution to Historical Pragmatics, ed. by Ulrich Busse, and Axel Hübler, 1–16. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ide, Sachiko
1989 “Formal Forms and ‘Discernment’: Two Neglected Aspects of Linguistic Politeness.” Multilingua 8 (2/3): 223–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ide, Sachiko, Beverly Hill, Yukiko Carnes, Tsunao Ogino, and Akiko Kawasaki
2005 [1992] “The Concept of Politeness: An Empirical Study of American English and Japanese”. In Politeness in Language: Studies in Its History, Theory, and Practice, ed. by Richard Watts, Sachiko Ide, and Konrad Ehlich, 281–297. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Iviglia, Filiberto
1907 Il vero gentiluomo moderno. Precetti e consigli agli allievi degli istituti militari inferiori. Turin: Tipografia Cassone.Google Scholar
Jolanda (pseud. of Maria Majocchi Plattis)
1909 Eva Regina. Il libro delle signore. Consigli e norme di vita femminile contemporanea. Como: Casa Editrice Italiana.Google Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z.
2017 Politeness, Impoliteness and Ritual: Maintaining the Moral Order in Interpersonal Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 Terms of (Im)Politeness. A Study of the Communicational Properties of Traditional Chinese (Im)Polite Terms of Address. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University Press.Google Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z., and Michael Haugh
2013 Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z., and Sara Mills
2013 “Rethinking ‘Discernment’.” Journal of Politeness Research 9 (2): 133–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mantea (pseud. of Maria Carolina Luigia “Gina” Sobrero)
1897 Le buone usanze. Turin: Libreria Roux di Renzo Streglio edit.Google Scholar
Marchesa Colombi (pseud. of Maria Antonietta Torriani Torelli Viollier)
1877 La gente per bene. Leggi di convenienza sociale. Turin: Giornale delle donne.Google Scholar
Martin, James R.
2000 “Beyond Exchange: Appraisal Systems in English”. In Evaluation in Text. Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, ed. by Susan Hunston, and Geoff Thompson, 142–175. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, James R., and Peter R. R. White
2005 The Language of Evaluation, Appraisal in English. London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meriggi, Marco
1989 “La borghesia italiana.” In Borghesie europee dell’ottocento, ed. by Jurgen Kocka, 169–185. Venice: Marsilio.Google Scholar
Mills, Sara
2017 “Sociocultural Approaches to (Im)Politeness”. In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness, ed. by Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh, and Dániel Kádár, 41–60. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Katharine, and Helena Sanson
(eds.) 2013 Women and Gender in Post-Unification Italy. Between Private and Public Spheres. Bern: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nevers, Emilia (pseud. of Emilia Luzzatto)
1883 Galateo della Borghesia. Norme per trattar bene. Turin: Giornale delle donne.Google Scholar
Pan, Yuling, and Dániel Z. Kádár
2011 Politeness in Historical and Contemporary Chinese. London & New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Paternoster, Annick, and Francesca Saltamacchia
2017 “(Im)Politeness Rules and (Im)Politeness Formulae: Metadiscourse and Conventionalisation in 19th Century Italian Conduct Books.” In Studies on Language Norms in Context, ed. by Elena Maria Pandolfi, Johanna Miecznikowski, Sabine Christopher, and Alain Kambers, 263–301. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Pigorini Beri, Caterina
1893 [1908] Le buone maniere. Libro per tutti. Approvato dal Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione per le Scuole femminili e Normali superiori e inferiori, II edizione riveduta e ampliata. Turin: F. Casanova e C.Google Scholar
Pizziconi, Barbara
2007 “The Lexical Mapping of Politeness in British English and Japanese.” Journal of Politeness Research 3 (2): 207–241. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Puckett, Kent
2008 Bad Form: Social Mistakes and the Nineteenth-Century Novel. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rigutini, Giuseppe, and Pietro Fanfani
1893 [1875] Vocabolario italiano della lingua parlata nuovamente compilato da Giuseppe Rigutini accresciuto di molte voci, maniere e significati. Florence: G. Barbèra. Retrieved from [URL]Google Scholar
Rizzoli, Enrico
1845 Degli offici di gentilezza convenienti agli ecclesiastici nei loro vari rapporti. Trento: Tipografia Vescovile di Brescia.Google Scholar
Romanelli, Raffaele
1989 “Borghesia/Bürgertum/bourgeoisie. Itinerari europei di un concetto.” In Borghesie europee dell’ottocento, ed. by Jurgen Kocka, 69–94. Venice: Marsilio.Google Scholar
Rossotti, Alberto
1914 [1910] La vita: consigli pratici di vita vissuta. Decima edizione riveduta e notevolmente accresciuta. Bologna: Stabilimento Poligrafico Emiliano.Google Scholar
Schrott, Karin
2005 Das normative Korsett: Reglementierungen für Frauen in Gesellschaft und Öffentlichkeit in der deutschsprachigen Anstands-und Benimmliteratur zwischen 1871 und 1914. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Shalom
1994 “Are There Universal Aspects in the Structure and Contents of Human Values?” Journal of Social Issues 50 (4): 19–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, Shalom, et al.
2012 “Refining the Theory of Basic Individual Values.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103 (4): 663–688. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Soave, Francesco
1809 [1788] Trattato dei doveri dell’uomo ad uso delle scuole d’Italia. Regole della civiltà. Venezia: Gaetano Martini.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, Helen, and Dániel Z. Kádár
2016 “The Bases of (Im)Politeness Evaluations: Culture, the Moral Order and the East-West Divide”. East Asian Pragmatics 1 (1): 75–108.Google Scholar
Tasca, Luisa
2004 Galatei. Buone maniere e cultura borghese nell’Italia dell’Ottocento. Florence: Le Lettere.Google Scholar
Terkourafi, Marina
2011 “From Politeness1 to Politeness2: Tracking Norms of Im/Politeness across Time and Space.” Journal of Politeness Research 7 (2): 159–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Geoff
2014 “Affect and Emotion, Target-Value Mismatches, and Russian Dolls: Refining the Appraisal Model.” In Evaluation in Context, ed. by Geoff Thompson, and Laura Alba-Juez, 47–66. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tommaseo, Niccolò
1973 [1867] Dizionario dei sinonimi della lingua italiana, ed. by Paolo Ghiglieri. Florence: Vallecchi.Google Scholar
Tommaseo, Niccolò, and Bernardo Bellini
1861–1879 Dizionario della lingua italiana. Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice. Retrieved from [URL]Google Scholar
Turnaturi, Gabriella
2011 Signore e signori d’Italia, una storia delle buone maniere. Milan: Feltrinelli.Google Scholar
Vanni, Laura
2006 Verso un nuovo galateo. Le buone maniere in Italia tra ‘antico’ e ‘nuovo’ regime. Milan: Unicopli.Google Scholar
Verdirame, Rita
2009 Narratrici e lettrici (1850–1950). Le letture della nonna dalla contessa Lara a Luciana Peverelli. Padua: Libreriauniversitaria.it Editore.Google Scholar
Verschueren, Jef
2000 “Notes on the Role of Metapragmatic Awareness in Language Use.” Pragmatics 10 (4): 439–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vertua Gentile, Anna
1897 Come devo comportarmi? Libro per tutti. Milan: Ulrico Hoepli.Google Scholar
Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, quinta impressione
1863–1923 Florence: Nelle stanze dell’Accademia. Retrieved from [URL]Google Scholar
Watts, Richard
2008 “Rudeness, Conceptual Blending Theory and Relational Work.” Journal of Politeness Research 4 (2): 289–317. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wetzel, Patricia
2004 Keigo in Modern Japan: Polite Language from Meiji to the Present. Manoa: The University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Sharon
1995 Italian Women’s Writing. 1860–1994. London: Athlone.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 7 other publications

Dossena, Marina
2019. Usage guides, social commentary and views on education in Late Modern Scotland. Brno studies in English :1 ► pp. [25] ff. DOI logo
Hall, Jon
2023. Cicero’s De Officiis, politeness and modern conduct manuals. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 24:1 ► pp. 16 ff. DOI logo
Paternoster, Annick
2022. Defining Etiquette. In Historical Etiquette, ► pp. 97 ff. DOI logo
Paternoster, Annick
2022. Etiquette Books. In Historical Etiquette, ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
Paternoster, Annick
2022. Scripts and Lines. In Historical Etiquette, ► pp. 191 ff. DOI logo
Paternoster, Annick
2023. The codification of nineteenth-century etiquette. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 24:1 ► pp. 160 ff. DOI logo
Unceta Gómez, Luis
2023.  Facetus and the birth of “European” politeness. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 24:1 ► pp. 32 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.