Directivity, politeness and curse tablets: a comparative analysis of Greek and Latin magic texts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/mhnh.22.2024.18635Keywords:
politeness, directivity, ancient aggressive magicAbstract
The paper offers a pragmatic account of the Greek and Latin curse tablets containing verbs encoding the giving or entrusting of a person or a good to the deities. By logging all directive speech acts and strategies which encode deference or the asking for help, it aims at observing to what degree the curser keeps the control over the action and if and to what extent politeness strategies are activated in the interaction with the gods.
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