The pragmatics of royal discourse in William Shakespeare’s Henry vi

Abstract Politeness ( Brown and Gilman 1989 ; Rudanko 1993 ; Kopytko 1995 ) and impoliteness ( Culpeper 1996 , 2001 ; Bousfield 2007 ) have a prominent place in the reading of Shakespearean drama and serve as a means of characterisation. In this study, I utilise (im)politeness and face theory to characterise the royal discourse in 1, 2, 3 Henry vi . The study aims to analyse the linguistic behaviour of King Henry vi to see how well his royal discourse reflects his kingship and how his linguistic inadequacy contributes to his political failures. I investigate Henry’s use of (im)politeness and facework to handle political negotiations and I evaluate his level of awareness of the “political face”, which is the king’s desire to preserve a positive public image and to save face in social interactions. I look at the examples of Henry’s inadequate linguistic behaviour and try to establish why this behaviour was inefficient in a given scene and context.