Abstract
The study aims to investigate the first order account of (im)politeness in the intimate relationships of married couples in the context of urban Pakistani society and with respect to four competing (face-saving, discursive, frame-based and rapport management) models of politeness. The study participants comprised 21 of those urban Pakistani bilingual (Urdu and Punjabi speaking) couples who sought psychological marital counselling from the researcher after being affected mainly by linguistic impoliteness and their training in linguistic politeness helped them out. Placed within the constructivist qualitative research paradigm and grounded in ethnography and phenomenology, findings of the study reveal that the phenomena under investigation should be studied within a more general framework, the discursive model emerges to be the most robust in its applicability though.
Highlights
The word ‘politeness’ generally applies to any social behaviour, which is culturally appropriate and shows care for other people’s feelings (McIntosh, 2013) whereas the term ‘linguistic politeness’ refers to such use of language in conversation as is appropriately considerate for the feelings and desires of the interlocutors and is intended to develop or maintain good interpersonal relationships (Huang, 2017; Sharifian, 2017; Van Olmen, 2017)
Placed within the constructivist qualitative research paradigm and grounded in ethnography and phenomenology, findings of the study reveal that the phenomena under investigation should be studied within a more general framework, the discursive model emerges to be the most robust in its applicability though
When we feel that we have been pushed to do something by a person who did not have any right to do so, we feel offended, uncomfortable or angry etc., but we do not necessarily feel that we have lost our face. She believes that politeness research should be concerned more with theharmony in social relations and less with the “linguistic strategies per se.”
Summary
According to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory, politeness is a tactful act of showing awareness and consideration for the hearer’s face, a public self-image, that we all have and want all others to recognize and respect. When we feel that we have been pushed to do something by a person who did not have any right to do so, we feel offended, uncomfortable or angry etc., but we do not necessarily feel that we have lost our face She believes that politeness research should be concerned more with the (dis)harmony in social relations (which, according to her, is based on subjective social judgements and can vary from one culture or social situation to another) and less with the “linguistic strategies per se.”. English is frequently code mixed into Urdu, the communication mostly takes place in Urdu with regular code mixing of and code switching to Punjabi (Rafi, 2017; Talaat, 2002; Umer-ud-Din, Iqbal, & Khan, 2011)
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