A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF POLITENESS EXPRESSION IN IGBO A CASE STUDY OF ERQ XLQ SPEECH COMMUNITY

📄 Project Abstract

Linguistics politeness is the way people choose to speak and how the hearers react to their speech. Udosen (2006) observes that languages is a social instrument without which our human interaction would suffer. The most universal forms of language behaviour are those used to show our routine needs, professional and social. No one is free to say just what one likes in whatever form of discourse. Rather, our conversation is a prescribed ritual in which an individual generally says what his fellow men expects him to say, observing the pragmatic rules, though unconsciously. In our societies today, living in harmony with nature, conforming to the norms of our common experience is the right conduct of interlocutors and politeness is that aspect of social behaviour which promotes harmonious living with nature and conformity to the norms of our common experience. Coulmans as cited in Dioka (2009) claims that being polite is not an attribute of language but it depends on the interlocutors in a...