A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF THE POLITENESS STRATEGIES OF ENGLISH AND IGBO LANGUAGES

📄 Project Abstract

The focus of this research is to examine to some extent, the similarities and differences between the politeness strategies of the Igbo and the English languages. This will help us to recognize the difficulties a language learner encounters when learning a second language, and be able to proffer some solutions to the problem. As an official language in Nigeria, English language is taught and learnt as a second language in academics and other learning environments. A native Igbo speaker has already developed a measurable amount of communicative competence in his or her native language before encountering the English language. His knowledge of the Igbo language might however affect his learning of English in one way or the other, therefore making him inefficient in the language he is learning. This difficulty is known as interference. This problem of interference however can be reduced if the English language learner can learn some of the pragmatic principles which are necessities ...