MISHKAT

MISHKAT

Politeness Mechanisms in the "Rejecting" Action in the Qur'an based on Brown and Levinson's politeness Theory

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Mohammad Mahdi Ajilian Mafuq 1
Parvin Dabirian 2
1 assistant professor, Qur'an and jurisprudence department, Faculty of Theology and Islamic Studies, Shiraz University (corresponding author)
2 MA in Linguistics, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University
10.22034/mishkat.2024.460758.2372
Abstract
The Holy Qur'an, has dialogues and different situations in which pairs of requests and rejections have happened. In this research, the mechanisms of politeness in "rejecting" in the Qur'an discourse have been analyzed with the text-oriented qualitative method, relying on the face concept in Brown and Levinson's politeness theory. The research question is that depending on the type of audience, request and context, what politeness mechanisms are used in the Qur'an to reject? Request rejection is analyzed in three types of speech pairs with high and low positions, positive and negative poles, and with balanced poles. Based on the results, in the analysis of the first situation, rejecting the request from the superior being in the form of a direct and decisive statement is common in the Qur'an discourse. In the analysis of the second situation, politeness mechanisms such as making excuses and illogical requests, expressing conditions, etc. have been used. In the analysis of the third situation, the use of face saving actions for the rejection is frequently used.
Keywords
Qur'an discourse
politeness theory
speech acts
politeness mechanisms
rejection
Brown and Levinson
Subjects
  1. Al-Khatib, M. Abed, “Politeness in the Holy Quran: A sociolinguistic and pragmatic perspective”, Intercultural Pragmatics, 2012, 9 (4): 479 – 509.
  2. Brown, P. and S. C. Levinson, Politeness: Some universals in language usage, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1987.
  3. Garcia, C., Hispanic Linguistics: Refusing an Invitation, The Prisma institute, 1992.
  4. Richards, J. C. and R. Schmidt, Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, Great Britain: Longman, 2010.
  5. Searle, J. R., Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1979.
  6. Searle, J. R., Spreech acts, The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, New York, 1969.

Yule, G., The study of language, Cambridge university press. New York, 2020.