A Pragmatic Study of Politeness in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express

Abstract

Politeness theory is one of the useful means in interpreting the literary discourse especially fictional discourse where the novelist uses language suitable to the characters moving in the socio-cultural milieu. Therefore, in order to discover a new meaning and eventually arriving at an authentic interpretation of the utterances of the characters, the principles of pragmatics in general and the politeness theory in particular is a novel way of doing so. The present research aims at studying two selected English novels and takes into consideration the politeness strategies as advocated by Brown and Levinson (1987). The researcher chooses to compare two novels written by two female writers to reduce the options and to make the focus only on strategies.  If the two novels were one by a male writer and the other by a female , the analysis would have become more complex and necessitated the provision of explanations and justifications that have no room in this study. The researcher chooses two different time periods to clarify whether the environment has changed the way women deal with these strategies or whether they have retained. It is known that politeness strategies have been established because they are the best way to address others without injuring feelings or verbal abuse. But are these strategies actually being used for the reasons cited by Brown and Levinson? Can it not be used to achieve goals and objectives other than what is known about?