Politeness strategies and face-threatening acts in master-servant relationships in selected Wole Soyinka and William Shakespeare’s drama texts

Abstract

This paper presents pieces of evidence of the use of Politeness Strategies and Face threateningActs in dialogues between characters in two drama texts: Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian author (text A) and Othello by William Shakespeare, an English author (text B). This research analyses the relationship between Pilkings, Amusa and Joseph in Death and the King’s Horseman and the relationship between Othello and Iago in Othello. The analysis utilisesthe politeness theory by Brown and Levinson (1978 and 1987) which revolves around the concept of face by Erving Goffman(1967). The thrust of thistheory is to minimise conflict and foster harmony in social interaction. In order to answer the following questions, the data werepurposively selected and qualitative research design is utilized: Do the speeches in the texts satisfy the principle of politeness? What kind of meaning interpretation is depicted in these drama texts? How has speech been used to show the kind of relationship that exists between these characters? It was discovered that while Amusa is utilising negative strategy, Pilkings always makesuse of negative face-threatening actsto avoid his subordinates losing their fear and respect for him; he usespositive face strategy when he dearly needshis subordinates to give him the response he needs. In Othello, the positive face strategy is deployed to enhance an ideal and harmonious master-servant relationship. This paper concludes that the use of politeness strategies is contextualised by the use of power relations between speaker and listener.