4.5 Emerging Themes
4.5.1 Theme One Audit Concern
4.2.11.10. Violation of Sympathy Maxim
Excerpt 90
Three female students sitting at Psychology balcony and playing music with their phones:
First female student: (Points at an obituary poster on the notice board) Eeeiyaa! It is like Dr. Ozoigbondu lost his mother?
Second female student: Ewoo! And she never too old ooo!
Third female student: Eeeeeh! Please that is his business.
By simple refusal to express sympathy, the third female student has violated the maxim of sympathy. This position is in consonance with Leech who holds that the great strategy of
‘impoliteness’ manifests itself in direct expressions of antipathy which is the opposite of sympathy towards the hearer (Pragmatics 227).
4.2.12. Face Threatening Strategies Among the Undergraduates of Madonna
Student: I came to check my result.
Lecturer: What is your registration number?
Student: BIL/13/111
Lecturer: (Goes through the list) 38 ‘F’
Student: But, I did very well in the examination.
Lecturer: Please leave my office!
The student leaves.
This is a face threatening act because the student did not employ any of the mitigating devices to start his request. Besides, the statement, ‘But I did well in the examination.’ threatens the lecturer’s positive face because the student did not show value for the lecturer’s face hence, the disagreement with the scores.
4.2.12.2. Imposition
Excerpt 92
An interaction between a new, mean looking male student who came to inform a female lecturer about the time for her lecture:
Student: Ma, Good morning ma.
Lecturer: Good morning.
Student: We have you.
Lecturer: (Silence)You have me or you have GS class Student: Ok we have GS class.
The expression We have you threatens the lecturer’s negative face. Besides, it is not only seen as an imposition but connotes a different meaning other than what was actually meant. It could even be seen as a threat given the fact that the lecturer had not seen or met with the student before then
and the meanness on the student’s face. On the other, the use of direct translation of the expression from Igbo language: Anyi nwere gi to English We have you gave the expression a threatening status.
4.2.12.3. Insults
Th
e researcher observes that undergraduates of Madonna University employ insults to threaten the positive face of their hearers. On what insults are, Culpeper citing Allan and Burridge puts it succinctly in these words:Insults are normally intended to wound the addressee or bring a third party into disrepute, or both. They are therefore intrinsically dysphemistic, and so typically taboo and subject to censorship. Insults typically pick on and debase a person’s physical appearance, mental ability, character, behaviour, beliefs and/or familial and social relations. Thus, insults are sourced in the target’s supposed ugliness, skin colour and/or complexion, over-or undersize (too small, too short, too tall, too fat, too thin), perceived physical defects (short-sighted, squint, big nose, sagging breasts, small dick, deformed limb), slovenliness, dirtiness, smelliness, tardiness, stupidity, untruthfulness, unreliability, unpunctuality, incompetence, incontinence, greediness, meaness, sexual laxness or perversion, sexual persuasion, violence towards others (even self), ideological or religious persuasion, social or economic status and social ineptitude. And additionally, supposed inadequacies on any of the grounds just listed among the target’s family, friends and acquaintances. (Impoliteness 143)
Excerpt 93
Two female students and one male Hausa cobbler at Girls Hostel up town:
First female student: Mallam, how much, you go take repair this shoe for me?
Male cobbler: Fay (pay) three hundred Naira.
Second female student: Onye ori, lenỤ isiya! ịna eji ka charcoal. (Thief, look at his head, look at him as dark as charcoal)
Male cobbler: Wetin you talk? If you no go do, comot for here.
Obviously, the remarks of the second female student are face threatening. The cobbler may not have understood the exact words, but from the tone of the second female student and the use of the word, charcoal, the cobbler could perceive the words as being insulting. Hence, his response,
‘Wetin you talk? If you no go do, comot for here.’
4.2.12.4. Direct Requests
Excerpt 94
A female student who wants to borrow a dictionary from a male lecturer:
Student: Good day, Sir.
Lecturer: Good day.
Student: Sir, borrow me your dictionary.
Lecturer: No! I want to use it now.
The request threatens the lecturer’s negative face. This is because it is an imposition on the lecturer; it shows no respect and lacks the right register. If the student had employed face threatening negative redressive action or negative politeness through the use of modals such as would, or the use of a mitigating devices or formulaics like please, or had even used the word lend instead of borrow that would have lessened the face threatening effect as in:
Sir, please can I borrow your dictionary?
Sir, would you mind lending your dictionary to me?
4.2.12.5. Accusation
Excerpt 95
A female student who lost her phone made this announcement in class at Chicago Hall:
Student: They stole my phone in the class yesterday. Anybody who finds it should kindly return it to me.
The announcement threatens the positive face of other students. In fact, it is an accusation on the part of the other students. Besides, the use of the word, kindly has been used in a way that negates politeness. The student’s announcement would have been redressed if she had employed a redressive action by using a positive politeness strategy or a face saving utterance like I misplaced and other formulaic expressions like please. Quirk and Greenbaum write that please is very commonly used to tone down the abruptness of a command (224).
4.2.12.6. Wrong Use of the Present Tense of Verbs in Requests
Excerpt 96
A male student came to have his course form signed and the following conversation ensued in the lecturer’s office:
Student: Good afternoon, ma.
Lecturer: Good afternoon.
Student: I want to sign my course form.
Lecturer: (Looks at student and takes the form and signs)
The request threatens the lecturer’s negative face. This is in line with Leech’s position that the use of first-person subject and past tense is a device of distancing (Pragmatics 169). He further comments that putting the verb in the past tense does not mean that the attitude of wanting does not apply at the moment of utterance. It rather shows that the speaker is ready to abandon that
attitude by avoiding confrontation with the hearer’s wishes (169). By looking at the student and signing the course form, the lecturer shows that she understands the face threatening nature of the act but has decided to ignore the student’s act.
4.2.12.7. Intrusion
Excerpt 97
Two female lecturers were discussing in one of the offices in the Department of Mass Communication and a male student walked in:
Student: Good afternoon, ma.
Lecturer: Yes, Good afternoon.
Student: Ma, I have done the corrections that you asked me to do in
my project.
Lecturer: So, you can’t see that I am discussing with a colleague?
Student: Sorry, ma. (Walks away)
By interrupting the lecturers, the student has threatened the positive face of the lecturer. The lecturer in turn, has threatened the student’s positive face as well by asking him the embarrassing question: ‘So, you can’t see that I am discussing with a colleague?’ The student tries to save his face through the use of a negative politeness marker, sorry in order to mitigate the face threatening act.
4.2.12.8. Direct Criticisms
Excerpt 98
Two female students chatting and laughing noisily on the staircase in Eugene Nzom Faculty of Management Building:
A male student: See as una dey laugh like people wey come from Nkwo Okija.
The two female students: Oya, come and flog us now!
It is obvious that the male student threatened the female students’ positive face by criticizing their actions directly. Conversely, the female students in trying to defend their own face threatened the male student’s face equally. Brown and Levinson share the same view when they assert that when a person’s face is threatened such a person in defending his or her own face can threaten other’s face (61). The face threatening would have been minimized if the male student had gone off records by expressing his points indirectly and avoid a direct use of language.