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In:Politeness in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Edited by Annick Paternoster and Susan Fitzmaurice
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 299] 2019
► pp. 107–144

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

 | Università della Svizzera italiana
Published online: 10 January 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.299.04pat
Abstract
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.
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
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