POLITENESS STRATEGY IN HAUSA REQUEST ACT: COMMON GROUND OF SPEAKER AND HEARER AS COOPERATORS

Abstract

This work examines politeness expressions in Hausa request act, using politeness theory proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987). Every society has certain norms and values which are considered as total way of life, and every individual has a face that needs to be protected when it comes to the issue of communicating. So, in contributing to an utterance, speakers need to consider such norms and values in order to be polite or impolite. Thus, speakers need to speak in a way that is appropriate to the societal norms and values. The aim here is to analyze how the politeness strategies work in Hausa when it comes to issue of request making. Data were collected during conversations among Hausa speakers at various settings. Three sociological variables of social distance, power status and ranking of imposition were used in the analysis (P, D and R) that exist between the interlocutors, using – and +. Findings show that the Hausa socio-cultural norms of politeness play a role in claims common ground between speaker and hearer, and also convey that speaker and hearer are cooperators in request act.  The study concludes that while making request in Hausa, the people use a politeness strategy of common ground of speaker and hearer as cooperators that play a role according to the politeness of Hausa and it is for communication effectiveness in building and maintenance of their social relationship.