The pragmatics of captatio benevolentiae in the Cely letters

This paper treats the rhetorical strategy of securing the addressee’s goodwill, also known as captatio benevolentiae. Following the postulation in Brown and Levinson (1987), I examine its possible pragmatic properties and effect, and its politeness value in the face wants of the addressees, taking into consideration the social distance and relative power of the correspondents. Captatio benevolentiae passages have been selected from the Cely Letters on the basis of their rhetorical properties, their intended use and also their position in the letter; captatio benevolentiae occurs not only at the beginning of the letter, as was traditionally dictated in the original ars dictaminis manuals, but also throughout the body of the text.