Late Egyptian, Old English and the re-evaluation of Discernment politeness in remote cultures

Abstract

The term "Discernment" was originally coined back in the 1980s, where it was first used as an approximate translation of the Japanese term wakimae but later used independently in other contexts and cultures. In this paper, we re-assess its value as an analytical tool for two remote cultures and languages with a severely fragmented and limited textual heritage; Late Egyptian and Old English. In spite of their obvious differences, they have in common that their societies were strictly hierarchically ordered. Power was a fixed factor and not negotiable, and thus social movement was generally not possible. Our argumentation is based on a careful study of the Late Ramesside Letters, a corpus of personal communication written in Late Egyptian (c. 1099-1069BCE), and on a range of differe nt constructions (directives, terms of address) in Old English. In these contexts, the concept of Discernment turns out to be a very useful analytical tool to describe the relations hip dynamics in strictly hierarchical societies. It describes (linguistic) behaviour which is socially and situationally adequate and quasi mandatory, and which closely indexes the social relationship between speaker and addressee, as well as the social and linguis tic context within which the exchange takes place.

Potestas and the language of power: Conceptualising an approach to Power and Discernment politeness in ancient languages

“…Matsumoto 1988Matsumoto , 1989Matsumoto , 1993, it is now considered that wakimae is the Japanese localization of Discernment. Thus, Discernment itself refers to an established theoretical, second-order politeness concept, which needs to be evaluated and considered on an individual cultural level (Pizziconi 2003;Kádár and Mills 2013;Kádár and Paternoster 2015;Ridealgh and Jucker 2019).…”

“…Since the earliest work on the phenomenon by Hill et al (1986) and Ide (1989Ide ( , 1992, many scholars have looked to further explore Discernment across cultures (i.e. Kádár and Mills 2013;Kádár and Paternoster 2015;Ridealgh and Jucker 2019). Fundamentally, Discernment has been approached as expected (and quasi-mandatory) behavioural norms used by subordinates towards their superiors within a communicative act, dictated by the socio-cultural context of the interaction (Ridealgh and Jucker 2019).…”

Portrait of students’ language politeness in elementary school

“…With the development of technology, many students are not polite in communicating and cause the other person to be offended. They tend to use slang acquired from their environment [22]. Students must be able to choose the right language when communicating with educators because school is a place for them to learn and develop their inner character.…”