• Name: Farwa Chana, Aijaz Ali,

• Iqra Abro, Lareb Burdi

• Class: BS-IV
• Research Topic: Politeness Theory
• Submitted to Mam Paras.
 INTRODUCTION.

Politeness theory is an important branch of pragmatics. This theory was

presented by Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson in 1970s. It proposes
that politeness is necessary for successful communication. It’s important to
note that politeness is dynamic which means it varies from culture to culture,
society to society or context to context. The theory draws heavily upon Erving
Goffman’s concept of face and has advanced this concept with a particular
focus on how and why we are polite to others. This theory is mainly based on
the concept of face. Face is defined as person’s public self image. Simply, it’s
a person’s reputation, self respect or grace.
 LITERATURE REVIEW.
According to politeness theory every person have to type of face:
1-Positive Face: when a person wants to be admired, or commended it’s called his positive face.
For Example : A- let’s have a cup of tea.
B- yeah sure! I was thinking about the same thing.
2-Negative Face: when a person wants his freedom and don’t want to be imposed by anyone it’s
his negative face. For example: A- let’s have cup of tea.
B- Umm, I just had a cup of tea so I can’t.
• Further the Politeness theory says every person use different kinds of Politeness strategies
which are:
1- Positive Strategy: when a person uses words such as dear, buddy and
friend in order to show closeness, relationship, or friendship then it’s called
positive Politeness strategy.
2- Negative Strategy: when a person uses modal verbs such as could, might,
and may etc..
3-Off-Record Strategy: when a person says something directly, openly and
clearly.
4-On-Record Strategy: when a person says something completely indirectly.
• Then we have two Face Acts in politeness theory.
1-Face Saving Act: when we use positive strategy, negative strategy and off-
record strategy we perform face saving act.
2-Face Threatening Act: when we use on- record strategy, we perform face
threaten act, Because on record strategy is direct and open.
 Research Question
The questions we asked were:
Qno-1 How do you ask your classmates for an extra pen?
Qno-2 How do you ask the shopkeeper to print a paper for you?
Qno-3 If your friend ask you to borrow your clothes for an event how will
you answer him/her? Even if you don’t want to share.
Qno-4 How would you ask your cousin to eat with closed mouth while
eating because that sound irritates you.
 FINDING.
The primary objective of this research was to identify how many young people are applying
this theory to their day to day life. To get the results we ran a questionnaire through out the
university in different departments among both boys and girls, the final results we got are:
(13.91%are applying positive face.) (5.76% are applying negative face) (21.6% are
applying on-record) (4.8% are applying off-record) (34.1%are applying negative strategy)
(19.71% are applying positive strategy). We also put a gender bar at the top of the sheet to
observe that who is applying negative strategies frequently “girls or boys” the results were,
boys are using negative strategies more often than girls, the answers from girls were mixed
in between the other strategies as well.
 CONCLUSION

We may not be expert but According to us politeness theory is very useful to

bring change in the society, In this chaotic country the effects of this theory
can be very helpful in the solving any kind of conflict and can bring peace.
This theory is also much effective in development of your positive social
image and can also be beneficial for one’s career and personal life as well,
politeness theory helps us to understand the mind-set of people , and the ways
in which they use language. During everyday interaction, individuals often
perform actions that threaten face. They therefore use politeness strategies to
mitigate face threats.