Politeness serves to manage social relations or is wielded as an instrument of power. Through good manners, people demonstrate their educational background and social rank. This is the first book to bring together the most recent scholarship on politeness and impoliteness in Ancient Greek and Latin, signalling both its universal and its culture-specific traits. Leading scholars analyse texts by canonical classical authors (including Plato, Cicero, Euripides, and Plautus), as well as non-literary sources, to provide glimpses into the courtesy and rudeness of Greek and Latin speakers. A wide range of interdisciplinary approaches is adopted, namely pragmatics, conversation analysis, and computational linguistics. With its extensive introduction, the volume introduces readers to one of the most dynamic fields of Linguistics, while demonstrating that it can serve as an innovative tool in philological readings of classical texts.

The first major study of politeness in Ancient Greece and Rome, from effusive greetings to aggressive humour and friendly banter.

About the Author
Luis Unceta Gomez is Senior Lecturer in Latin Philology at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. His research interests focus on Latin semantics and pragmatics, and especially linguistic politeness, topics on which he has published extensively. Lukasz Berger is a lecturer in Classics at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. His research interests are pragmatic aspects of dialogue in Roman comedy.


Book Information
ISBN 9781009123037
Author Luis Unceta Gomez
Format Hardback
Page Count 380
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 770g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 158mm * 29mm