Authors

Discussion

This paper considers how examples of ‘affective language’ in birchbark letters from Kyivan Rus’ in the period c.1100-1300 characterise and underline inter-personal relationships between authors and addressees. The use of diminutives, epistolary formulas, and other forms of affective language between letter writers and recipients of variant social ‘classes’ sheds light on the importance of social hierarchy for Rus’ians in their everyday social and economic communications. I will show that existing ideas about social hierarchy in Kyivan Rus’ can be reappraised with emotional and linguistic analyses of the birchbark letter corpus. I contend that affectionate personal relationships permeated through vertical social divides and across space, as in relationships between tributary villagers on the fringe of the Novgorod land and urban boyars in Veliky Novgorod.