Oprah Winfrey Talk Show: An Analysis of the Relationship between Positive Politeness Strategies and Speaker’s Ethnic Background
Main Article Content
Abstract
This research paper analysed the positive politeness strategies used by Oprah Winfrey and her guests in the Oprah Winfrey Talk Show. By analysing four full interviews for each group (African-Americans and Caucasians), the study also aimed to investigate the effect of the speaker’s ethnic background on the use of positive politeness strategies in Oprah Winfrey Talk Show. Based on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness framework, the study revealed that both Oprah and her guests employed positive politeness strategies when addressing each other to avoid face threatening or face damage. The data also revealed that Oprah and her Caucasian guests used more positive politeness strategies than with the African-Americans. In addition, it was found that the most frequently used strategies in Oprah’s talk with both groups were “Seek agreement”, “Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)”, “Give (or ask for) reasons”, “Presuppose/raise/assert common ground” and “Assert or presuppose S’s knowledge of and concern for H’s wants”, respectively. However, the study showed that there was a difference in the use of positive politeness strategies due to the addressee’s ethnic group background (African-American and Caucasian). However it was not dominant. Based on the findings, this article concludes with some implications for foreign/second language speakers.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Abushihab, I. 2015. Contrastive analysis of politeness in Jordanian Arabic and Turkish. Theory and Practice in Language Studies 5(10): 213–223. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0510.06
AlAfnan, M.A. 2014. Politeness in business writing: The effects of ethnicity and relating factors on email communication. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics 4: 275–289. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2014.42022
Bargiela-Chiappini, F. 2003. Face and politeness: New (insights) for (old) concepts. Journal of Pragmatics 35(10–11): 1453–1469. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0378-2166(02)00173-x
Barron, A. and Schneider, K.P. 2009. Variational pragmatics: Studying the impact of social factors on language use in interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics 6(4): 425– 442. https://doi.org/10.1515/iprg.2009.023
Bell, A. and Johnson, G. 1997. Towards a sociolinguistics of style. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 4: 1–21.
Blum-Kulka, S. 1992. The metapragmatics of politeness in Israeli society. In Politeness in language: Studies in its history, theory and practice, eds. R. Watts, R.J. Ide and S. Ehlich, 255–281. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110199819.255
Boekesteijn, N. 2015. The effects of gender and ethnicity on language use during collegial interaction: A conversation analysis. MA dissertation, Leiden University. http://hdl.handle.net/1887/34578 (accessed 21 June 2016).
Britain, D. 1992. Linguistic change in intonation: The use of high rising terminals in New Zealand English. Language Variation and Change 4(1): 77–104. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954394500000661
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Das, A. and Herring, S.C. 2016. Greetings and interpersonal closeness: The case of Bengalis on Orkut. Language & Communication 47: 53–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2015.12.003
Eelen, G. 2001. A critique of politeness theories. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
El Saj, H. 2012. Discourse analysis: Personal pronouns in Oprah Winfrey hosting Queen Rania of Jordan. International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 2(6): 529– 532. https://doi.org/10.7763/ijssh.2012.v2.163
Discourse and social values in Oprah Winfrey hosting Queen Rania of Jordan. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 4(11): 289–294. https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p289
Elvheim, E. 2006. Language of American talk show hosts: Gender-based research on Oprah and Dr. Phil. MA dissertation, Uppsala University.
Filardo, E. 1996. Gender patterns in African American and White adolescents’ social interactions in same-race, mixed-gender groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71(1): 71–82. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.71.1.71
Fraser, B. 1990. Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 14(2): 219–236.
Goffman, E. 1955. On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes 18(3): 213–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1955.11023008
Henley, N. 1995. Ethnicity and gender issues in language. In Bringing cultural diversity to feminist psychology: Theory, research and practice, ed. L.
Hope, 361–395. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10501-015
Holmes, J., Marra, M. and Vine, B. 2012. Politeness and impoliteness in ethnic varieties of New Zealand English. Journal of Pragmatics 44(9): 1063–1076. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2011.11.006
Ilie, C. 2001. Semi-institutional discourse: The case of talk shows. Journal of Pragmatics 33(2): 209–254. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0378-2166(99)00133-2
Kang, Uk-ky. 2001. When is it rude to be rude: Politeness across cultures and subcultures. http://thormay.net/koreadiary/politeness.html (accessed 21 June 2016).
Lakoff, R. 1973. The logic of politeness or minding your p’s and q’s. Chicago Linguistics Society 9: 292–305.
Lakoff, R.T. 1989. The limits of politeness: Therapeutic and courtroom discourse. Multilingua-Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 8(2–3): 101–130. https://doi.org/10.1515/mult.1989.8.2-3.101
Leech, G. 1983. Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.
Locher, M.A. 2004. Power and politeness in action: Disagreements in oral communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2005.1.1.9
Locher, M.A. and Watts, R.J. 2005. Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research 1: 9–33.
Mills, S. 2003. Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Najeeb, Z.M., Maros, M. and Mohd Nor, N.F. 2012. Politeness in e-mails of Arab students in Malaysia. GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies 12(1): 125–145.
Popp, D., Donovan, R., Crawford, M., Marsh, K. and Peele, M. 2003. Gender, race and speech style stereotypes. Sex Roles 48(7/8): 317–325. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1022986429748
Sara, M. 2003. Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scollon, R. and Scollon, S.W. 2001. Intercultural communication: A discourse approach (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Watts, R. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Xiao-yan, M. 2014. Redressive strategies for FTA in Oprah Winfrey’s Talk Show. SinoUS English Teaching 11(5): 380–386.