POLITENESS STRATEGIES USED IN WOLE SOYINKA’S A DANCE OF THE FORESTS

Abstract

This study examines politeness strategies used in Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests.  Previous studies on  politeness strategies have explored politeness strategies reflected in  ‘Little  women movie’, politeness strategies employed by Jordanian Professors in online classes, and politeness strategies in lecturer-students classroom interaction, but not much scholarship have been done on politeness strategies used in Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests.  This study, therefore, analysis politeness strategies used in Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests.  The study adopted Brown’s and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory as its theoretical framework and deployed qualitative descriptive and quantitative designs to analyse its data. The data for the study were extracted from the text A Dance of the Forests, and analysed. The result showed that the characters in the text deployed politeness strategies: Bald-on-record politeness strategies, positive politeness strategies, negative politeness strategies and off-record politeness strategies in their dialogues. The dominant politeness strategies the characters deployed in their dialogues are positive politeness strategies. The second dominant politeness strategies which the characters used in their dialogues are Bald-on-record. The third predominant politeness strategies that the characters employed in their dialogues are off- record politeness strategies. Negative politeness strategies are the forth principal politeness strategies that the characters used in their dialogues. The study concludes that effective and efficient use of politeness strategies in dialogical discourse enable interactants to converse with each other or one another without frictions or conflicts.