The Concept of Pragmatic Politeness with Reference to Standard English and Standard Kurdish PhD. Dissertation By Abbas M.

Abbas Supervised By Professor Dr. Muhammad Maruf Fattah

Pragmatic Politeness
This dissertation which is based on Brown and Levinsons Politeness Theory, deals with linguistic strategies of pragmatic politeness expressions. It investigates how the speakers pragmatic intent is recognised from the conventional meaning of an utterance, and how the content of this pragmatic intent is understood by the hearer.

This dissertation falls into five chapters:

Chapter One
Chapter one, the introduction, covers: the preamble, the problem, the purpose of the study, the hypotheses, the significance of the study and the scope of the study.

The Problem
One of the problems of the politeness strategies is that they can not be easily transferred from one language to another. The issue of politeness is a very complicated one in any language and the ability to manipulate politeness strategies is one of the last skills acquired.

The Aims of the Study

The aims of this study are as follows:

1. Examine how participants establish and maintain their social relationships with politeness strategies. 2. Make clear the concept of the "pragmatic politeness", and then, to apply the strategies and sub-strategies to both languages, viz; Standard English and Standard Kurdish.

The Significance of the Study The findings of this study are expected to be of value to the teachers of English and Kurdish, and to the syllabus designers. It can also be of benefit to linguists, in general and pragmaticians in particular.

The Scope of the Study This study adopts Brown and Levinson's (1978, 1987) 'politeness' theory focusing on the analysis and descriptions of the conversational strategies in both English and Kurdish languages.

CHAPTER TWO
Chapter two, Issues in Pragmatic Politeness, provides some definitions of pragmatics and politeness, outlines the scope of pragmatics, defines the key terms and concepts used throughout the study of this dissertation, elaborates on the significance of the pragmatic politeness, delineates the different approaches to politeness, provides areas of such conversational principles as cooperative and politeness principles and explains Leechs Theory of Maxims of Politeness, Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory and Brown and Levinsons Politeness Theory.

Definitions of pragmatics
Charles Morris (1938:6) defines pragmatics as the study of the relations of signs to interpreters. To Levinson pragmatics is the study of those relations between language and context that are grammaticalized , or encoded in the structure of a language.

Definitions of Politeness
To Watts (2003:39) politeness can be identified as follows: 1. Politeness is the natural attribute of a 'good' character. 2. Politeness is the ability to please others through one's external actions . 3. Politeness is the ideal union between the character of an individual and his external actions .

Approaches to Politeness
1.The Theory of Politeness Principle 2.Grice's Cooperative Principle 3.Leechs (1983) Maxims of Politeness Tact maxim Generosity maxim Approbation maxim Modesty maxim Agreement maxim Sympathy maxim 4.Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory 5.Brown and Levinsons Politeness Theory

CHAPTER THREE
Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory This theory holds that the speakers considering the performance of a speech act will generally choose more polite strategies in proportion to the seriousness of the act. There are four different levels of polite strategies that have the potential to gain the goal. The list of substrategies that go with the four superstrategies are presented below:

1. Bald on Record
This strategy is a direct way of saying things, without any minimisation to the imposition, in a direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way. e.g. imperative form without any redress: Wash your hands

2. Positive Politeness
This strategy is directed to the addressee's positive face, her/his perennial desire that her/his wants or the actions, acquisitions, values resulting from them - should be thought of as desirable.

e.g. strategies seeking common ground or cooperation, such as in jokes or offers: Wash your hands, honey

Positive Politeness Strategies

St. 1 Noticing, attending to H St. 2 Exaggeration St. 3 Intensifying interest to H St. 4 Using in- group identity makers St. 5 Seeking agreement St. 6 Avoiding disagreement St. 7 Presupposition/ raise/ assert common ground St. 8 Joking St. 9 Asserting or presuppose Ss knowledge of and concern for Hs wants St. 10 Offering and promising St. 11 Being optimistic St. 12 Including both S and H in the activity St. 13 Giving (or ask) reasons St. 14 Assuming or asserting reciprocity St. 15 Giving gifts to H (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation)

3. Negative Politeness
Negative politeness attends to a person's negative face needs and includes indirectness and apologies. It expresses respect and consideration.
Strategy 1: Being conventionally indirect Strategy 2: Questioning, hedge Strategy 3: Being pessimistic Strategy 4: Minimizing the imposition, Rx Strategy 5: Giving deference Strategy 6: Apologizing Strategy 7: Impersonalising S and H Strategy 8: Stating the FTA as a general rule Strategy 9: Nominalization Strategy 10: Going on record and incurring a debt, or as not indebting H

4. Off-record Strategy
This strategy is the indirect strategy. It uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the potential to being imposing.
e.g. off-record strategies, which consist of all types of hints, metaphors, tautologies, etc. `Gardening makes your hands dirty`.

Off-Record utterances can be constructed in a number of ways:

Strategy 1: Giving hints Strategy 2: Giving association clues Strategy 3: Presupposition Strategy 4: Understating Strategy 5: Overstating Strategy 6: Using tautologies Strategy 7: Using contradictions Strategy 8: Being ironic Strategy 9: Using metaphors Strategy 10: Using rhetorical questions Strategy 11: Being ambiguous Strategy 12: Being vague Strategy 13: Over-generalization Strategy 14: Displacing H Strategy 15: Being incomplete, using ellipsis

CHAPTER FOUR
Chapter four, Applications of Brown and Levinson's Theory to Kurdish, describes the politeness strategies used in the study and applies and explains the strategies to Kurdish based on Brown and Levinson's Theory.

CHAPTER FIVE Conclusions and some Suggestions for Further Study

1. This study shows that there are hardly any

differences in the politeness strategies used by the speakers and both number and types of politeness strategies seem to correspond, although, negative politeness strategies are more frequent than positive politeness strategies, and bald-on-record strategy is the most infrequent of the three.

2. Both the English and the Kurdish Ss are

regularly indirect in their speech, and hedge their opinions and give deference to the hearers. politeness as a concept can claim universality. However, a society should not be regarded as more or less polite than another society, as it has been proved in this study.

3.The most important conclusion is that

Thank you for listening!

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