Solidarity Politeness in Old Kingdom Speech Captions

Ancient Egyptian private tombs unveil face-to-face interchange depictions in the so-called daily-life scenes. They include short texts written as if spoken with a deliberate choice of linguistic features. As such, these are precious multimodal sources, with interplay between image and text. The depictions complement the captions and vice versa. Not only interactions between superiors and subordinates (high-to-low and low-to-high) are on view but also between low-ranking individuals (socially equals). This paper focuses on speech captions between these socially equal individuals in Old Kingdom tombs (2686 – 2181 BCE). It will explore which Politeness strategies are used in the captions’ linguistic patterns and how politeness is reflected in the individuals’ attitude (nonverbal communication). Building on previous Politeness theories, a discussion will follow on Volition and Discernment to find out which aspect is developed in the Old Kingdom depictions of such face-to-face interchanges. It is argued that these multimodal sources, in which written and visual forms are intertwined, are extremely fruitful research avenues for sociolinguistics and more specifically for historical politeness research.