Von Hof über hofieren zu höflich ... Zur deutschen Höflichkeit aus linguistischer Sicht

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the concept of politeness (Höflichkeit) from a linguistical point of view, starting from the ethymon Old High German / Middle High German hof and its original meanings. We follow the semantical and structural evolution of the output word up to the current state of the language by researching the word family with its different nuances, e.g. Hof, Gehöft, höfisch, Höfling, and also compounds as Hofgut, Hofschranze, hoffähig, Friedhof, Fronhof, Fuhrhof etc. Thus arises an overview of the semantical potencies of the analyzed lexeme.