L’evoluzione sociopragmatica dei saluti di riverenza e sottomissione in italiano dal XVII al XX secolo

Abstract

This article focuses on the diachronic development of greetings and farewells in the Italian language from the 17th to the 20th century, with a specific emphasis on the use of reverence and submission-based salutations, which were characteristic of the pre-19th-century period. Based on a corpus of prose theatrical texts – chosen for their mimetic representation of oral and spontaneous communication –, greeting and farewell forms are analysed according to their frequency of use and their semantic and pragmatic features. The study also accounts for sociolinguistic variation based on interpersonal relationships of power and social distance. Alongside the empirical data, the paper examines the potential factors leading to the decline and eventual disappearance of reverence and submission-based salutations between the 19th and 20th centuries.