Impoliteness as an indexical marker of flirtatious teasing in Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress

Abstract

While existing scholarship has examined the rhetorical structure, gender politics, metaphorical patterns, and psychological undertones of Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress , the speaker’s use of confrontational, presumptive, and impolite speech acts remains underexplored. This gap obscures how linguistic strategies function not only to persuade or dominate but also to flirt, generate interpersonal tension and enable playful social negotiation. This study therefore undertakes a pragmatic-stylistic analysis of the poem, focusing on how its persuasive strategy is structured around calculated uses of (im)politeness and flirtatious teasing. Adopting a discourse-pragmatic approach, the poem is analysed for key speech acts, facework patterns, and indexical cues. The analysis draws on frameworks from politeness theory ( Brown and Levinson 1987 ), impoliteness ( Culpeper 1996 , 2011 ), teasing discourse ( Boxer and Cortés-Conde 1997 ; Dynel 2008 ), and indexicality ( Silverstein 1976 , 2003 ; Bucholtz and Hall 2004 ). Findings reveal a three-phase rhetorical progression: ironic admiration expressed through mock politeness; existential pressure articulated through bald-on-record impoliteness; and a final shift to erotic teasing marked by playful imperatives and shared agency. Together, these phases demonstrate how the poem constructs facework, reframes desire, and transforms interpersonal pressure into a form of pragmatic play. This study contributes to pragmatic stylistics by showing how poetic discourse enacts interactional strategy and affective positioning, and it points toward further research on the pragmatics of teasing, seduction, and face negotiation in poetic and historical discourse.