Arabic Studies

Politeness in Arabic Papyrus Letters

An overview of a new research project: Politeness in Arabic Papyrus Letters

The Project

Historical politeness studies is a growing field which has not been employed in Arabic philology and Arabic papyrology. This is mainly due to academic disciplinary compartmentalization including at Leiden University. While the study of written historical documents remains dominated by philological and historical methods, sociopragmatic historical politeness models continue to be mainly fed by European language data. In this project we will bring these two disciplines together aiming for academic insights for both fields while training MA students from two different Leiden programmes to apply sociopragmatic methods to historical Arabic texts.  For more information please consult our detailed proposal.

The Team

Prof.Dr. Marina Terkourafi

Prof. Dr. Petra Sijpesteijn

Z.M. Matsouka

Suzan Lucas