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Part of
Current Issues in Intercultural Pragmatics
Edited by István Kecskés and Stavros Assimakopoulos
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 274] 2017
► pp. 231–253

Chapter 10
Identities and impoliteness in translated Harry Potter novels

| Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

This paper applies Culpeper’s (2011) impoliteness strategies to children’s novels, arguing that impoliteness is used in children’s texts to construct, attack and consolidate character identity. In an analysis of the Harry Potter series it shows how the use of impolite token structures changes in the course of a series and helps express a change in identity as speakers gain maturity. Using Toury’s (1980) Descriptive Translation Studies framework, the paper shows that impolite utterances are commonly translated in a more simplified manner, which influences character construction, especially for antagonistic characters, whose hostile identity is tempered in translation.

Keywords: impoliteness, children’s novels, translation, identity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Identity and face
    • 2.2Identity in narrative texts for children
    • 2.3Identity in the school story
    • 2.4Children’s literature in translation
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Impoliteness in the original
    • 3.2Impoliteness in the German translation
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Impoliteness in the original
    • 4.2Impoliteness in the German translation
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.274.11ple
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