The Pragmatics and Metapragmatics of Intervention: A Focus on Morality and Politeness
Ayad Hammood Ahmed
Fallujah University-Cultural Relations Dept.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25130/jls.5.1.18
Keywords: Metapragmatics, impoliteness, im/morality, intervention, Religiosity, National Identity
Abstract
This research offers a perception of understanding the metapragmatics of politeness and morality through intervention by examining peoples’ reaction to certain aggressive acts. The relationship between im/politeness and morality was explored in terms metacommunicative voicing by observers and participants. The analysis in this paper focuses on certain cases in which aggressive behaviours are committed in public. This investigation aims to contribute to the current research on im/politeness and morality by examining the borders of im/politeness and the moral order in the arena of conflict between an abuser and intervener. The data of this study are naturally occurring as they were yielded without the participants’ awareness of the situation displayed on a TV-show. This paper adopted Kadar & Marquez Reiter (2015) as a model of analysis in the field of impoliteness. It contributed to such a model in terms of examining intervention in Arabic Pranks. This could be a motivation for cross cultural studies of impoliteness in general and intervention in particular. It was found that the metapragmatics of im/politeness through the act of intervention was affected by means of certain scales measuring attributes that are central to Arabic culture including national and moral identity, religiosity, collectivism and humanity.
