(Im)politeness Strategies in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:

This book investigates the manifestation of impoliteness in Early Modern English dramatic dialogue employing, as a case study, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It points out that impoliteness is not only ubiquitous, but that it is, at least from an idiographic point of view, central to the workings of Romeo and Juliet. The study argues that the main functional types of impoliteness discerned in the play are affective impoliteness, coercive impoliteness, and what the researcher terms teasing/provocative impoliteness and persuasive impoliteness. In addition, it is argued that politeness has a role to play in defusing tense situations. Hence, this study introduces a new functional type of politeness: soothing politeness. It is argued that the interaction between schematic knowledge, viewpoint analysis and attribution theories can help to examine and account for the impressions that readers form during the reading process.In addition to describing the manifestation of impoliteness in dramatic dialogue, the study, with a theoretical aim, proposes a tentative framework for the analysis of impoliteness.