Stylistics and Teaching Literature: Politeness Strategies as Foregrounding Devices in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame

Foregrounding in literature and stylistics is generally applied to the analysis of poetry and in some cases to prose fiction. However, in few studies foregrounding has been used in the analysis of playtexts.Although a play-text may be fictional in literary studies, its interactional features have set it apart as a particular genre in which foregrounding devices are used in a different way. This study aims at investigating deviations—one of the global devices of foregrounding—of politeness strategies inSamuel Beckett’s Endgame, and in turn highlighting the relation between these deviations and themesand content of the play. The model adopted in this study, is Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness strategies. In light of this model, politeness strategies—on-record, negative, positive and off-record—used to do face-threatening-acts are analyzed and discussed as far as power and distance relationbetween Hamm and Clov is concerned. The results of the study reveal that foregrounding can also occur at the level of discourse and brings to the fore how an Absurd play such as Beckett’s Endgame creates an unconventional and new mode by manipulating the conventions of politeness. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the relation between linguistics and literature can be insightful for teaching literature in general and drama in particular

Keywords:

Foregrounding , Samuel Beckett , Endgame , Politeness Strategies , Deviation