Volume 35, Issue 2, March 2018, Pages 51–57
Byamungu Byandima David1
1 English Department, Letters and Humanities, ISP-IDJWI, RD Congo
Original language: English
Copyright © 2018 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article probes into Leech’s Interpersonal Rhetoric and more precisely the politeness principles chosen in expressing politeness in English and Kihavu. It pinpoints the main differences and similarities of politeness as well as the different cultural features pertaining to connotational aspects of politeness in both English and Kihavu. It draws instances from actual speech situations in either language to show how politeness is expressed by English people differently from Havu people owing to their different cultural backgrounds. Throughout this research, the findings have revealed that an accurate selection of the politeness principle to employ and a good mastery of the English culture by Havu people are vital to avoid being misconstrued by English interlocutors, especially in the perspective of cross-cultural communication. Further, this research has been possible thanks to the library and ethnographical researches, the socio-linguistic and pragmatic approaches, the analytical method and interviews.
Author Keywords: Pragmatic Comparison, Cooperative Principle (CP), Politeness Principle (PP), Irony Principle (IP) and Cross-cultural Communication.
Byamungu Byandima David1
1 English Department, Letters and Humanities, ISP-IDJWI, RD Congo
Original language: English
Copyright © 2018 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
This article probes into Leech’s Interpersonal Rhetoric and more precisely the politeness principles chosen in expressing politeness in English and Kihavu. It pinpoints the main differences and similarities of politeness as well as the different cultural features pertaining to connotational aspects of politeness in both English and Kihavu. It draws instances from actual speech situations in either language to show how politeness is expressed by English people differently from Havu people owing to their different cultural backgrounds. Throughout this research, the findings have revealed that an accurate selection of the politeness principle to employ and a good mastery of the English culture by Havu people are vital to avoid being misconstrued by English interlocutors, especially in the perspective of cross-cultural communication. Further, this research has been possible thanks to the library and ethnographical researches, the socio-linguistic and pragmatic approaches, the analytical method and interviews.
Author Keywords: Pragmatic Comparison, Cooperative Principle (CP), Politeness Principle (PP), Irony Principle (IP) and Cross-cultural Communication.
How to Cite this Article
Byamungu Byandima David, “A Cross-cultural Pragmatic Comparison of Some Polite Forms in English and Kihavu,” International Journal of Innovation and Scientific Research, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 51–57, March 2018.
