Analysis Exercise 3

Analyze the following speech/lecture on European imperialism with respect to the speakers use of positive and negative politeness strategies and the exploitation of the politeness maxims as he is addressing his audience.

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Many of you here today are not from Africa but you are, many of you, from parts of the world that have been affected by one of the great global forces at work in world history what we loosely call imperialism. And that is why I thought what I should try to talk to you about today is this phenomenon of imperialism, not just in terms of the 19th and 20th centuries, and as you will see, not just in terms of the impact of Europe on the non-European world. Because what we are grappling with in the phenomenon of imperialism is a phenomenon that in various forms is as old as the formation of state systems by human beings. So Im going to, er, at considerable risk, er, to myself, try to set this phenomenon in a much wider, er, more global perspective. I hope that might be of interest to many of you who have either been subjected to what you consider imperialism, or indeed have been part of states and societies that have themselves been imperialistic or are still being so. I think we have to begin by facing up to the fact that today we live in an age of anti-imperialism. All over the world there is a reaction against the things which we associate with the phenomenon of imperialism: the domination of the weak countries or societies by the strong; the economic exploitation of the natural resources of often poorer countries, er, in the world, by the rich industrialised parts of the world; the gross, and in many parts of the world, the widening gap in terms of political, military and economic power and standards of the living between the rich and the poor countries; the belief, in one society, of the absolute superiority of its culture, its values and its beliefs and the attempt to impose these upon the people of other cultures and often of different races. Today in Europe and America, in the countries of the ex-Soviet Union and in Asia, as well as in all those areas of what used to be called, the Third World which were until so recently under European influence or indeed colonial rule, imperialism is regarded as a bad thing. To call someone an imperialist is a term of abuse, like calling him a racist or a fascist. The word imperialism, I think youll agree, is loaded with emotional and ideological overtones. If I say, for instance, that recently I have been studying and contributing to a new Oxford History of the British Empire, which I have, that is clear, concrete and perfectly respectable historical subject to study. It was indeed the most powerful and extensive empire in world history. But if I say Im studying and writing about the history of British imperialism, thats already a somewhat different thing. The kind of books that are written about it are different too.