Linguistic Study of (Im)politeness in Adiga’s The White Tiger

This paper applies politeness theory to a literary text mainly to examine its applicability for literary analysis. Adiga’sThe White Tiger (2008) is selected as its epistolary frame makes it a good case for the study of politeness. The paperhybridizes politeness theory with speech act theory. The analysis of the addressee-addresser relationship is approachedboth pragmalinguistically and sociopragmatically. The focus of the analysis is on the way the addressee’s negative andpositive faces are threatened throughout the narrative by the addresser’s speech acts and adopted letter writingstrategies. The analysis approves of the usability of politeness theory in literary character analysis and power-relationinvestigations. It contends literary works provide fertile fields for the study of such relations among characters

Keywords:

politeness , negative , positive , speech acts , culture