(Translating) Emirati Arabic Politeness Formulas: An exploratory study and a mini-mini-dictionary (original) (raw)
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The study of verbal politeness has been one of the most interesting fields of research for sociolinguists over the past few decades. The publication of Brown and Levinson’s seminal work Politeness, Some universals in language usage (1978), in particular, gave to field researchers and theorists a general framework able to account for the outer manifestations of verbal politeness in different languages and cultures. The two scholars borrowed the anthropological concepts of face and face-wants from Erving Goffman and successfully employed them to explain the principle that triggers all verbal politeness phenomena. Their theory and methodological tools it provided have been employed by field researchers to describe the code of politeness of ancient and contemporary societies. Despite the undeniable progress of sociolinguistic studies during the last three decades, few studies have so fare tackled the description of the verbal code of politeness employed in Maghrebi Arabic dialects as a ...
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Sajjadiyya -Sahifa al S -Linguistic politeness in the Al
Politeness, a branch of language pragmatics, is related to the person's awareness about the audience's face; and includes different manner and speech that cause respect to others. Imam Sajad (PBUH) has used a different politeness style in the Al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya in billing and cooing with God. The present study aimed to analyze linguistic politeness in the Al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya. To this aim was used descriptive-analytical method. Based on the results, the critical linguistic politeness style, including audience description using call style; the way of names report and negative and positive attributions of God in the form of verbal and noun sentence; praise, and laud and confess to the unity of God when saying divine attributes; speaker description himself and comparison and use of moderators in the order space. With politeness in God's presence and honoring his rank, these styles have presented a purposeful system in the prayer context to bowing the audience and emphasizing their position.
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This article attempts to examine the theory of politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson in 1978. It presents its strengths and weaknesses from the point of view of many experienced linguists. Furthermore, the author contributes with her own observations and research results in relation to the theory and its applicability in Middle Eastern, particularly Arabic speaking communities. This article tackles the theory from a Middle Eastern perspective, when so far it has been mainly discussed in Western or Far Eastern cultures. The findings suggest that certain factors need to be added to the formula which Brown and Levinson (1978) have put forward as a means to calculate the weightiness of face-threatening acts. Such factors relate to the specific religious, environmental, and gestural aspects of different speech communities. Nevertheless, the theory proved to be applicable to a wide range of Western as well as Eastern cultures.
2012
Speakers of Persian, like speakers of other languages, utilise Routine Politeness Formulae (RPF) to negotiate central interpersonal interactions. RPF in Persian have not received any systematic description as to their forms, their functions, their typical conditions of use and their discourse structure rules. Bridging this gap, for the first time, RPF from five frequentlyused speech acts-namely, greeting, leave-taking, apologizing, thanking and requesting-are documented in this thesis. Data were derived from Persian soap operas and from role-plays with native speakers, and were entered into a database for further analysis. The analysis is qualitative and the data are conceived of as phraseological units to be represented as dictionary entries. The study of the aforementioned speech acts and their related array of RPF reveals the dynamics of interpersonal polite behaviour among Persians, reflecting the following sociocultural values prevalent in Iranian society: (i) its group-oriented nature, (ii) a tendency towards positive (solidarity) politeness, (iii) sensitivity to remaining in people's debt, (iv) sensitivity to giving trouble to others, (v) a high premium on reciprocity in interpersonal communications, (vi) the importance of seniority in terms of age and social status, and (vii) differentiation between members of the 'inner circle' and the 'outer circle'. This thesis also reveals the dominance of the strategy of self-lowering and other-elevating. Almost all RPF in Persian allow for the use of this pervasive strategy, which is also manifested by two further sub-strategies: (i) a propensity to exaggerate favours received from others, and (ii) giving precedence to others over oneself. Finally, it is suggested that Islamic teachings have significantly influenced the formation and use of certain RPF. The dictionary resulting from this work can serve as a resource for researchers in sociolinguistics and pragmatics, and for the teaching of Persian to non-Persian speakers.