Compliments, insults, and broken taboos in Richard III's quest for power

This paper aims to analyse the strategic language employed by Shakespeare’s Richard III in his quest for power. By imagining conversation like a battle for self-recognition, it can be assumed that Richard’s resourceful linguistic skills are used as if they were physical weapons to strike a powerful blow. The analysis will focus on meaningful scenes of the play, in particular Anne Neville’s wooing (Act 1, Scene 2), Margaret of Anjou’s burst of anger (Act 1, Scene 3) and Elizabeth Woodville’s resistance (Act 4, Scene 4). The pragmatic research about the main deployed linguistic strategies will be framed in the opposition between compliments and insults as diverging categories mirroring linguistic politeness and impoliteness, with an interstice dedicated to broken taboos as a means to either jeopardize or enhance one’s power in a dialogical situation.