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Part of
Pragmatic Approaches to Latin and Ancient Greek
Edited by Camille Denizot and Olga Spevak
[Studies in Language Companion Series 190] 2017
► pp. 83–110

Chapter 5
Quapropter, quaeso? ‘Why, for pity’s sake?’

Questions and the pragmatic functions of quaeso, obsecro, and amabo in Plautus

| University of Genoa

This contribution aims to shed further light on some well-studied deverbal Latin Pragmatic Markers (PMs), that is, procedural elements originally derived from verbs which become frozen in form and acquired new intersubjective meanings. In particular, I will focus on quaeso, obsecro, and amabo ‘please’ in Plautus, which have been widely discussed in the relevant literature above all with regard to their primary function, namely that of politeness markers softening the illocutionary force of orders and requests, and in relation to their sociolinguistic distribution. In this study, I shall focus rather on the less widely studied values developed by quaeso, obsecro, and amabo when used in questions in Plautus. The data show that these markers express a range of meanings which go far beyond politeness and the illocutionary functions of mitigation, coming to convey a variety of personal stances, strengthening of pragmatic force and even (mock) impoliteness, thus realizing a sort of “pragmatic reversal” (in the words of Mazzon 2007).

Keywords: pragmatic markers, speech acts, politeness, personal stance, pragmatic reversal
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Object of investigation
    • 1.2State of the art and aims of the present study
    • 1.3Pragmatic markers and their analysis in a classical language
  • 2.Theoretical framework: Speech Acts and Pragmatic Macrofunctions
    • 2.1Speech Acts
    • 2.2Pragmatic macrofunctions
  • 3.A functional account of quaeso, obsecro, and amabo in questions
    • 3.1Subtypes of questions
    • 3.2Referential questions
    • 3.3Directive interrogatives
    • 3.4Expressive interrogatives
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.190.05fed
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