مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF IMPOLITENESS STRATEGIES IN “VAST PRESENT” BY AYŞE KULİN

Abstract :

Politeness and impoliteness strategies of Politeness Theory have been used in a wide range of discourse analyses including literature. Politeness Theory put forth by Brown and Levinson in 1987 has been discussed and developed by many other pragmatists. Jonathan Culpepper (1996) classifies impoliteness strategies under five headings: bald on record impoliteness, positive impoliteness, negative impoliteness, sarcasm or mock impoliteness and witholding impoliteness. In later classifications he adds the terms off-record impoliteness, situational impoliteness, conventional or semiconventional impolite expressions and implicated impoliteness. This paper aims to analyse the impolite utterances in the communication of the female protagonist in “Vast Present” by Ayşe Kulin in terms of Culpepper’s classifications. The results of the analysis indicate that the woman character uses more positive and off-record strategies than negative and on-record strategies, and the factors that lead her to impolite speech acts are not anger or rage but fear, lack of control on what is happening and helplessness.