Description
Social class and offensiveness in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
Sophia Zacharia
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’
The aim of this paper is to study how Heathcliff and Catherine’s unfulfilled love, in Wuthering Heights, and its dramatic consequences, hatred and revenge, can be shaped cross-culturally and intra-culturally through the use of impoliteness strategies. The study also considers the role of social class in shaping characters’ impolite behaviour which may have emotional consequences and cause offence (Culpeper 2011). To this end, the study examines the use of impoliteness strategies in two Greek versions (Kazantzis 1984, Mantoglou 2020) of the novel. The 1984 version seems to make use of a language which is less offensive and aggressive, in contrast to the more recent version of 2020. As translated discourse constructs the period each translation was created in, the two target versions register a change in how society viewed offence in 1984 as opposed to nowadays. Α questionnaire addressing 13 postgraduate students at NKUA confirmed the findings. The study shows that impoliteness is a significant tool for shaping chara¬cters in target versions and seems to creatively interact with social class.
