On the interactional interpretation of deferential and rude vocatives in early modern vernacular Chinese texts

[[abstract]]The present work examines the communicational features of traditional Chinese honorific and rude vocatives, and applies the results gained to contribute to recent issues in the field of theoretical politeness research. Recent studies of linguistic politeness research have shown that (im)politeness is realised in communication not so much by how speakers produces certain utterances, but rather how addressees contextually evaluate these. Opinions, however, vary as regards the means by which the addressee’s evaluative process can be theorised: it is under debate as to whether hearers can freely interpret every utterance, and whether evaluation is a phenomenon that is similar in every language and society. The present article argues that evaluation is a universal phenomenon, but that its nature differs across languages, as shown by the fact that historical Chinese vocatives afford few possibilities for contextual interpretation compared with the (im)polite vocatives of other languages