Extending Im/Politeness Strategies to Qura'nic Discourse: Surat Yusuf as an Example

Abstract

Surat Yusuf is full of beautiful discourses. There is the discourse of intimacy between the father (Jacob) and Yusuf (PBUH). Also, the discourse of evil and conspiring between Yusuf's brothers, the discourse between father and sons, the vague discourse from sons to their father, the adaptation discourse from Al-Aziz (king of Egypt) to his wife, the seduction discourse, the justice discourse, conversation among women of the city and seduction discourse again and the discourse of administration of the vaults from Al-Aziz (king of Egypt) to Yusuf (PBUH) are found in this Surat. So, this study aims to explore the use of im/politeness strategies in this Surat. More specifically, the study aims at exploring which strategies are the most used throughout the Surat. By analyzing these dialogues in the Surat, the researcher tries to find the im/politeness strategies in these dialogues and the reasons behind preferring the use of one strategy over another. Moreover, the researcher reveals the speech acts used in each utterance. The data are discussed in the light of Searle’s (1969) Speech Act theory, Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness theory and Culpeper’s (1996) theory of impoliteness. It is interesting to note that speech act theory is helpful to reveal the intended meaning of the speaker. In addition, im/politeness approaches give an insight into the speaker’s ideology within the Qura'nic discourses. This study reveals that there are some factors like power, distance and status play the most crucial role in choosing one strategy over the others.