Abstract
This study investigates politeness in parliamentary discourse in Ghana. Using politeness theory as framework and the parliamentary Hansard as source of data, the study examines the politeness strategies employed by parliamentary actors, the implications of the frequency of the usage of the politeness strategies, and how the Standing Orders of Parliament determine the choice of a politeness strategy. Findings of the study show that political actors in the Parliament of Ghana use the bald on-record, the positive, the negative and the off-record politeness strategies in varied proportions. The study further reveals that the negative politeness strategy is the most frequently used politeness strategy with the Speaker being the highest user of the negative and the bald on-record politeness strategies. Again, the study found out that the off-record politeness strategy is the least used strategy. The Majority Members in Parliament use the highest frequency of the positive politeness strategies while the Minority Members of Parliament employ more negative politeness strategies. The study concludes that parliamentary discourse in Ghana employs more of the direct explicit polite expressions than the indirect implicit expressions of politeness. The study recommends that researchers should pay critical attention to the politeness phenomenon in parliamentary discourse.
Highlights
One central pragmatic feature of human communication employed by participants during interaction is the politeness phenomenon (Borris & Zecho, 2018)
Using politeness theory as framework and the parliamentary Hansard as source of data, the study examines the politeness strategies employed by parliamentary actors, the implications of the frequency of the usage of the politeness strategies, and how the Standing Orders of Parliament determine the choice of a politeness strategy
This study sought to use the Hansard as source of data to investigate the politeness strategies that are employed in parliamentary discourse, the frequency of usage of the politeness strategies, and how the Standing Orders of parliament influence the choice of politeness strategies
Summary
One central pragmatic feature of human communication employed by participants during interaction is the politeness phenomenon (Borris & Zecho, 2018). It is important that efforts are made to study how a political institution like Parliament employs politeness in parliamentary discourse for the purpose of establishing good relationships among parliamentarians and ensuring that the dignity and integrity of Parliament is maintained. According to Balogun and Murana (2018), the political nature of man is his innate sense of dignity or self-importance that he wants others to acknowledge This means that the desire of the politician to be respected and regarded leans to the notion of politeness. With regards to Europe, Saleem and Alattar (2020) examined how politicians in the British and Iraqi parliaments employ (im)politeness strategies in political blame and blame avoidance situations. Drawing ideas and assumptions from Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness model, Culpeper’s (1996) model of impoliteness, and Grice’s (1975) cooperative principle, Saleem and Alattar (2020) found that the British MPs used impoliteness strategies at the blame stage and politeness strategies at the blame avoidance stage, whereas the Iraqi MPs exploited impoliteness at both the blame and blame avoidance stages. Murphy (2014) investigated the use of (im)politeness in the Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQ) sessions in the UK Parliament using Culpeper’s (2011) impoliteness model for the analysis of impolite behaviours and discovered that opposition MPs used impolite expressions when asking the Prime Minister (PM)
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