Politeness and Indirectness in Donald Trump’s Intercommunication

Abstract

This paper elaborates the notion of politeness as a pragmatic concept and attempts to find answers regarding the strategies followed to achieve a polite act within a course of communication. Both the speaker and the hearer tend to act politely (in accordance to their beliefs regarding a polite act) and expect to be treated alike. However, the type of politeness considered in this paper is different from that of a culture-based concept.

Pragmatic Politeness consists of following a number of principles and maxims in accordance to a particular context. Both types of the concepts are connected to the notion of ‘face’ which refers to the image that both the speaker and hearer desire to save, whenever they are intercommunicating. The face saving of interlocutors requires the adaptation of Leech’s Politeness principle and maxims. This paper examines both ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ strategies to approach politeness in Donald Trump’s political intercommunications verify or nullify common claims that politeness is achieved throughout indirect methods. The paper hypothesizes that both strategies are applicable to fulfill a communicative polite behavior on the basis of proper context.