Conversations between British and Indian characters in A passage to India: a reappraisal of politeness theory
Year: 1994
Type: article
Abstract: This article investigates the discoursive dimension of literary texts \nat the level of character’s interaction drawing its evidence from E.M. \nForster’s A Passage to India (1924). Firstly, the main categories proposed \nby Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) in their seminal study of \n‘politeness phenomena’ are presented together with some of the questions \nraised by the application of the theory to social psychology and \nstylistic analyses. This model is the applied to fictional conversations \nbetween British and Indian participants in order to discover the ways \nlinguistic strategies are selected to limit other participant’s freedom \n(‘negative face’) or challenge their personal image (‘positive face’). \nThis selection of verbal strategies will convey information about power \nrelations, and the way speakers react to these circumstances. Tentative \nconclusions call for revision and further research.
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2503693