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# Politeness Strategies in Biblical Hebrew and West African Languages

**Authors:** Andy Warren-Rothlin · **Year:** 2007 · **Venue:** Journal of Translation 3/1 **Link:** [doi.org/10.54395/jot-t933r](https://doi.org/10.54395/jot-t933r) · not in the library (download refused, HTTP 403, 2026-10-17) · **Licence:** free to read, no CC licence — summary only

[**3** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2141200761) openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14[Journal of Translation](https://openalex.org/S4210235784)

- [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.54395/jot-t933r)
- [PDF](https://www.sil.org/system/files/reapdata/52/86/42/52864222039255360849657627139680140142/siljot2007_1_05.pdf)
- [DOI 10.54395/jot-t933r](https://doi.org/10.54395/jot-t933r)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2141200761)

**Authors (1)**

1. Andy Warren-Rothlin

Citations and author metrics from openalex-snapshot (2026-10-14); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

**Not read: the PDF could not be fetched.** From the title and the author's known work on Hebrew politeness: the paper compares how Biblical Hebrew softens requests and shows deference — self-abasing "your servant" for "I", "my lord" for "you", the particle נָא, formulas like "if I have found favour in your eyes", third-person address of a superior — with strategies in West African languages, to help translators render them naturally. It likely uses Brown and Levinson's face theory. Check against the text.

## Ideas

- I1. (to check) A politeness lexicon for the pragmatics rules: עַבְדְּךָ / עַבְדֶּךָ (speaker as "your servant"), אֲדֹנִי (addressee as "my lord"), נָא, אִם־נָא מָצָאתִי חֵן בְּעֵינֶיךָ, בִּי אֲדֹנִי; a quote with any of them gets `hedge` = polite.
- I2. (to check) Third-person self-reference: when "your servant" is the subject of a 3rd-person verb inside a quote, resolve it to the speaker (first person) in the event reader.
- I3. Count these markers per speaker pair in Genesis (Abraham–Hittites, Jacob–Esau, Joseph's brothers–Joseph) to show who defers to whom.

## For Mova

I1 refines the `hedge` column of `tools/macula/src/prag.rs`; I2 applies to coreference in quotes; I3 is a worked example for [Discourse: narrative, speech and the shape of a text](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/09-discourse/) §12 (politeness and address). Re-read once the PDF is in.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.54395/jot-t933r](https://doi.org/10.54395/jot-t933r)

```
@article{warrenrothlin2007politeness,
  title = {{Politeness Strategies in Biblical Hebrew and West African Languages}},
  author = {Warren-Rothlin, Andy},
  journal = {Journal of Translation},
  year = {2007},
  doi = {10.54395/jot-t933r},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.54395/jot-t933r}
}
```

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