Conversation in Italian galatei

1. to examine the role that the galatei written in different historical times assign to conversation in the characterisation of politeness. In particular, I try to reconstruct the norms that should regulate: (a) the management of conversation (e. g. turn-taking, silence, interruptions, etc.); (b) non-verbal communication (i. e. prosody, kinesics, proxemics); (c) listener’s behaviour; (d) permitted and taboo topics. By conversation I mean (as do writers of galatei) a particular kind of speech event characterised by informality and spontaneity and by an equal distribution of rights, expressed through the reciprocal interchange of turns and ideas (cf. Burke 2007: 91). 2. to identify both the changes and elements of continuity in galatei over the ages; 3. to compare findings arising from the analysis of the galatei with the principles elaborated within the main first-generation politeness theories (i. e. Lakoff’s, Leech’s and Brown and Levinson’s) with a view to discovering possible parallels.