A Pragmatic Study of Politeness Strategies in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25130/Lang.9.3.P1.24Keywords:
UDHR, politeness strategies, negative face strategy, positive face strategy, face threatening-actAbstract
This research is an examination of the usage of politeness strategies in official discourse. It uses Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Theory as the theoretical framework. Portrayal upon authentic written data collected from certain articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), this paper recognizes and labels different politeness strategies—positive, negative, bald on record, and off-record. The findings reveal that even within legal discourse, there are adaptions of politeness strategies based on social distance, power relations, and the level of imposition that are convoluted within such legal discourses. The analysis offers insight into how rigid and legal discourse employ politeness strategies in order to spread harmony and maintain acceptance.
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