Review: Gender shifts in the history of English. Anne Curzan.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.pp. 223 + xii.

Herbert Schendl (2001:9) defines ‘the study of ongoing changes in a language’ as one of the fundamental goals of historical linguistics. Curzan’s book, which examines the historical development of the English gender system, is a work noteworthy not only for historical linguists, but also for experts of gender and language precisely because it attains the aforementioned objective. The book not only gives a well-argued description of the development of English linguistic gender – a fact that makes it a pivotal addition to earlier theories of the field (e.g. Corbett 1991) – but it also utilises its findings to contribute to the research on contemporary gendered language

Politeness in Historical and Contemporary Chinese

Takes a comparative, diachronic perspective on Chinese politeness and its evolution up to the present day, linking diachronic and synchronic approache

Postscript

This Special Issue that the readers hold in their hands is also special in the literal sense of the word: as far as I am aware, it is the first ever publication that is dedicated to the study of politeness and impoliteness in ancient languages and cultures. The subject of history itself has received attention in (im)politeness research; there has been a variety of studies that have examined (im)politeness situated in historical times, such as Watts (1999), Beeching (2007), Culpeper and Archer (2008), and Pan and Kádár (2011), just to mention a few scholars who are known to be affiliated with politeness research

Nyelvi udvariasság/udvariatlanság és metapragmatika (Linguistic politeness, impoliteness and metapragmatics

Az udvariasság2 olyan jelenség, amelyről mindannyian szoktunk reflektíven beszélni és gondolkodni. E reflekciós jelenség számos formában megnyilvánulhat: reflekciónak számít például, ha különböző nyelvi interakciókról vagy azok résztvevőiről beszélünk (például: „láttad, milyen bunkó volt?”), de reflektívek a megfelelőnek tartott társadalmi viselkedéssel foglalkozó illemtankönyvek is. Az udvariasság és a hozzá kapcsolódó kérdések tárgyalásának relevanciája és történelmi beágyazottsága ugyanakkor kultúránként változó: némely kultúrában ennek évezredes hagyományai vannak, máshol ez kevésbé jellemző. The udvariasság2 a phenomenon which is all we used to talk about reflective and to think. This reflection phenomenon can manifest in many forms: a reflection of matter, for example, when different linguistic interactions or participants of we are talking about (for example: "Did you see what kind of jerk?"), but reflective of the appropriate It held social behavior on etiquette books. courtesy and the related issues of negotiations and historical relevance However, culturally imbedded variable: some of this millennial culture There are traditions, in others it is less commo

Introduction: Advancing linguistic politeness theory by using Chinese data

Abstract The present introduction provides an overview of the field of linguistic politeness research. Since Acta Linguistica Academica has diverse scope of inquiries, and linguistic pragmatics has been only one (and perhaps not the most central) of the various areas featured in the journal, it is relevant to provide such an up-to-date overview. My goal is not only to point out how the contributions advance politeness theory, but also to make the research featured in the special issue relevant to academics working in other areas of linguistics

Relational Ritual Politeness and Self-display in Historical Chinese Letters

This paper delivers an interdisciplinary approach to historical Chinese epistolary data, by examining the language and style of historical Chinese letters from the perspective of linguistic pragmatics, historical politeness research and relational ritual theory. It argues that various discursive characteristics of Chinese epistles, which previous Sinological research has identified, may be systematically modelled if one approaches historical Chinese letter writing as a ritual practice. Language use in historical Chinese letters tends to have a strongly ritual character, due to two reasons. First, Chinese epistles represent interpersonal interaction in a sociocultural context that triggered intensive ritual politeness. Second, many literati regarded letter writing as an activity of fine art by means of which one could ritually display one’s epistolary skill. Owing to this, the language of historical Chinese epistles features a duality of (1) other-oriented ritual politeness and (2) self-oriented ritual display. The present paper examines this duality by setting up an analytic model, and by investigating a renowned corpus of Qing Dynasty letters, Xuehongxuan chidu 雪鴻軒尺牘 (Letters from Snow Swan Retreat)

Ritual public humiliation

Abstract This paper investigates cases in which people who are perceived to have violated a major communal and/or social norm are humiliated in public in a ritual way. As a case study we examine online videos drawn from the Chinese videosharing site Youku. Humiliation as a form of punishment has been thoroughly studied in sociology (see e.g., the seminal work of Foucault 1977). This interest is not coincidental, considering that studying humiliation may provide insight into the operation of shame as a punitive phenomenon, as well as the role of publicity and complex participation structures when shame is inflicted on others. Yet, punitive humiliation has been understudied in pragmatics; in particular, little research has been done on cases in which it is not an institutionally/socially ratified person (e.g., a judge) but the members of the public who inflict humilation. The study of this phenomenon contributes to the present Special Issue as it demonstrates that pragmatics provides a powerful tool to model the dynamics of (language) behaviour such as humiliation that might be difficult to capture by using more conventional linguistic approaches. We demonstrate that while ritual public communal humiliation tends to be highly aggressive, it also shows noteworthy recurrent (meta)pragmatic similarities with institutionalised forms of punishment