Face threatening Acts and Politeness Strategies in a Nigerian Quasi-Judicial Public Hearing
Keywords:
Face threatening acts, Nigeria, Politeness strategies, Quasi-judicial public hearingAbstract
Previous studies have addressed negative politeness strategies in investigative hearings without addressing other types of politeness strategies used in the hearings. Using Brown and Levinson's model of politeness strategies, this paper focused on the different types of politeness strategies used by participants in the 2008 quasi-judicial public hearing on Federal Capital Territory administration in Nigeria. The data comprised forty purposively sampled video recordings of the hearing, obtained from the African Independent Television, Nigeria. Three politeness strategies were deployed at different stages of the interaction, face-threatening acts on record without redress, face threatening-acts on record using positive politeness, face- threatening acts using off-record politeness. The paper argues that the interactants' goals, relationship between the interactants, as well as the structure and context of the quasi-judicial public hearing affects the language used in the hearing.
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