Abstract
This article aims at highlighting utterances of (im)polite behaviours and hierarchical relationships between interactants in two ancient Egyptian literary fictional narratives: the Tale of Sinuhe and the Tale of Wenamun, dated respectively from the Middle Kingdom and the 21-22nd Dynasty. The study shows 1) the importance of the second-level concept of discernment in the study of data stemming from a highly hierarchised society and 2) that the concept of facework is to some extent satisfactorily applicable to these data. 3) It also explores different strategies used in the tales to express hierarchical relationships between interactants, namely, the use of indirectness, irony, behavioural and motion patterns as well as honorifics and introductory formulas in mock correspondence and how they compare to real ones. 4) The study also stresses and explains the importance of the didactic component of literary fictional texts and the many pieces of information that they provide on the pragmatic anchorage of a literate elite’s written production in a very controlled environment.