Emotivity and Politeness in Women Letters at the Colonial Period

Abstract

Emotive communication can be used as an instrument of persuasion as well as a politeness strategy (Arndt & Janney, 1991; Caffi & Janney, 1994). We analyze emotive categories proposed by Caffy & Janney (1994)–evaluation devices, proximity devices, specificity devices, evidentiality devices, volitionality devices, and quantity devices as found in letters written by women. Our objective is to analyze emotive communication in its relation to politeness in authentic texts of colonial Mérida, that is, in a corpus. It is also our goal to evidence which component of interlocution, the writer or the reader, is the one aě ected each time by these strategies, in order to establish the relationship of politeness with the use of these categories. Even though this relationship is not taken as obligatory, it will be shown how some of the categories, especially those of distance/proximity, are prone to be employed directly with a polite intention. This analysis shows how women present themselves and how they construct their readers, usually men.