LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 22:7 July 2022
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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SYNTAX OF POLITENESS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN
INDIAN ENGLISH AND BANGLA
M.A. Dissertation

SUDIPTA SAHA

SYNOPSIS

This thesis aims to demonstrate the politeness devices exhibited morphologically and syntactically in Indian English and Bangla and to study the syntactic aspect of the politeness devices used in these two languages. This study also focuses on making a comparative study of the politeness devices to find out the similarities and the differences which the above mentioned languages have from the morphological and the syntactic perspective.

The common morphological devices that Indian English and Bangla caters to politeness are fixed polite expressions, adverbial downtoners and the syntactic devices that both the languages show up to manifest politeness are play-downs and tag questions. The difference lies in the fact that Indian English lacks honorifics and polite particles to evince politeness whereas those serve the purpose in Bangla along with other politeness devices.

Both the languages syntactically represent politeness in the Left periphery (Rizzi, 1995), apart from the sentential domain but the projections are different. Indian English structurally represents politeness in the ForceP and ModifierP of the left periphery (Rizzi, 1997) and on the contrary politeness particles in Bangla manifests politeness in the Polite TopicP, Polite FocusP and Polite ParticleP respectively.

Keywords: Morphology, syntax, politeness, left periphery.

The cornerstone of this thesis is to examine the politeness strategies or linguistic devices employed in Indian English and Bangla and how are they evinced morphologically and syntactically. It also seeks to investigate the syntax of politeness of the two aforementioned languages. It also intends to make a comparative study of how politeness can be exhibited from the realm of morphology and syntax in these two languages.

Politeness, a largely pragmatic notion can be stated as the usage of a language in a conversation to sustain and uphold interpersonal relationships. It takes into consideration the feelings of the interlocutors as in the way they need to be behaved with.

Politeness research from a pragmatic standpoint began in the late 1970’s and has gained immense popularity. It has also gone through certain changes which covers – the “first wave” of politeness research which looked into it using universalistic concepts, the “second wave” approaches to politeness research as an idiosyncratic phenomenon and the “third wave” frames politeness across languages and cultures.

Apart from the pragmatic aspect, this research would probe into the syntactic aspects of politeness.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Sudipta Saha
Research Scholar
School of Languages and Linguistics
Jadavpur University
sudiptas.sll.rs@jadavpuruniversity.in
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