How to Ask (Im)politely: Letters from Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East from the ninth to the nineteenth century
Edited by Gijsbert Rutten and Petra Sijpesteijn
Special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics 27:1 (2026) v, 138 pp.
Petra Sijpesteijn
List of John Benjamins publications in which Petra Sijpesteijn is involved.
Title
Articles
2026 How to ask (im)politely: Letters from Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East from the ninth to the nineteenth century How to Ask (Im)politely: Letters from Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East from the ninth to the nineteenth century, Rutten, Gijsbert and Petra Sijpesteijn (eds.), pp. 1–10 | Introduction
2026 Wanting or asking? Polite and impolite requests in Arabic papyrus letters How to Ask (Im)politely: Letters from Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East from the ninth to the nineteenth century, Rutten, Gijsbert and Petra Sijpesteijn (eds.), pp. 11–40 | Article
Requests are a type of directive speech act in which the speaker aims to get someone to do something that that person might not have done without being asked. In the case of Arabic papyri, the scholarly attention requests have received has been limited mainly to petitions addressed to government… read more