A politeness analysis of Catullus’ polymetric poems: Can Leech's GSP cross the ancient–modern divide?

The author applies Geoffrey Leech's Grand Strategy of Politeness (GSP) to the Latin poetry of Catullus, with a view to determine whether Leech's theory is applicable across the chronological divide between Antiquity and Modernity. The language assessed is limited to “directive/impositive” speech acts and “commissives”, and the poetic volume is limited to the most salient and representative examples of (im)politeness found in Catullus’ polymetric poems (1–60). With Catullus being viewed in terms of the “implied author”, these examples are then assessed according to Leech's five scales for measuring appropriate degrees of politeness—vertical distance, horizontal distance, weight/value, strength of socially defined rights/obligations, and self-territory/other-territory—in order to isolate the variants of these scales, as they are found in Catullus, and the pragmalinguistic forms used to encode these variants. No one scale is found to be more determinative for politeness than another, but the importance of social class for informing politeness appears as a prominent variant in four out of the five scales. Although impoliteness manifests itself far more often than politeness, in almost all instances of impoliteness the motivation can be connected with the implied author's aim to entertain his literary audience. The article tentatively confirms the basic suitability of Leech's theory for assessing politeness usage in ancient literature.