The Winter’s Tale on the Greek stage
Shaping gender intra-culturally
The study examines two Greek target versions (1952, 2004) of Shakespeare’s
The Winter’s Tale (1611) in order to examine how politeness orientations and awareness of power distance change to shape the relational dynamics between characters. In the two target versions male characters vary intra-culturally and interculturally, while themes such as female submissiveness and gender relations show intra-cultural variation. Analysis of naturalistic translation data shows variation in the way certain characters are reshaped in the two versions, which is confirmed by experimental data elicited by a questionnaire. The significance of the research lies in that pragmatics may provide a basis for the study of intra-cultural variation in characters’ identities in a play, and in that translation is a rich resource for tracing pragmatic variation in the manifestation of pragmatic phenomena.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Literature review and methodology
- 3.Data analysis
- 3.1Male characters
- 3.2A female character, Hermione, and her relationship with others
- 4.Questionnaire and findings
- 5.Discussion and the significance of research
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References
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Texts
References (22)
References
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Culpeper, Jonathan. 2015. “Impoliteness Strategies.” In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society, ed. by Alessandro Capone, and Jacob L. Mey, 421–445. Cham: Springer.
Culpeper, Jonathan, Michael Haugh, and Dániel Z. Kádár (eds). 2017. The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Dillon, Janette. 2010. “Shakespeare’s Tragicomedies.” In The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, ed. by Margreta De Grazia, and Stanley Wells, 169–184. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Erickson, Peter B. 1982. “Patriarchal Structures in The Winter’s Tale
.” PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 97 (5): 819–829. 

Hofstede, Geert, Gert Han Hofstede, and Michael Minkov. 2010. Cultures and Organizations: A Software of the Mind, 3rd ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Professional.
Lakoff, Robin. 1973. “Language and Woman’s Place.” Language in Society 21: 45–80. 

McConachy, Troy, and Helen Spencer-Oatey. 2021. “Cross-cultural and Intercultural Pragmatics.” Ιn The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ed. by Michael Haugh, Dániel Z. Kádár, and Marina Terkourafi, 733–757. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Mills, Sara. 2003. Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Muir, Kenneth. 1968. Shakespeare: The Winter’s Tale (Casebooks Series, 84). 2nd ed. London: Red Globe Press.
Pollali, Cristina-Styliani, and Maria Sidiropoulou. 2021. “Identity Formation and Patriarchal Voices in Theatre Translation.” Journal of Pragmatics 1771: 97–108. 

Sidiropoulou, Maria. 2012. Translating Identities on Stage and Screen. Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Sidiropoulou, Maria. 2021. Understanding Im/politeness through Translation, English vs. Greek. Cham: Springer. 

Sifianou, Maria. 1992. Politeness Phenomena in England and Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Spencer-Oatey, Helen. 1996. “Reconsidering Power and Distance.” Journal of Pragmatics 26 (1): 1–24. 

Tomlinson, John. 1999. Globalization and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Watts, Richard J. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Texts
ST Shakespeare, William. 1611. The Winter’s Tale. Accessed April 28, 2023. [URL]
TTa Shakespeare, William. 1952/2009. To Χειμωνιάτικο Παραμύθι [The Winter’s Tale]. Translated by Vassilis Rotas. Αθήνα: Το Βήμα.
TTb Shakespeare, William. 2004. To Χειμωνιάτικο Παραμύθι [The Winter’s Tale]. Translated by Nikos Chatzopoulos. Αθήνα: Νεφέλη.