Politeness strategies – a means for building women’s identity in Gothic novels

Boshevska, Elena and Neshkovska, Silvana (2021) Politeness strategies – a means for building women’s identity in Gothic novels. Book of Proceedings Second International Virtual Academic Conference Europeanization, westernization and identity formation in the Western Balkans. pp. 81-107. ISSN 978-9951-832-06-9

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Abstract

Language behaviour and identity are interconnected. As linguistic
behaviour expresses complex social meanings, through it, people indicate
the different social groups they identify with, the social roles they
embrace, and the conflicting values they sometimes espouse. The paper
at hand tackles women’s identity and how it is built in the AngloAmerican society through the use of politeness strategies in two historic
periods – the nineteenth century and the twenty-first century. For the
purposes of this study, a literary discourse analysis is performed on one
classic (“The Turn of the Screw) and one contemporary Gothic novel
(“The Turn of the Key”), which despite featuring supernatural
phenomena, depict a great deal of reality too and reveal a lot about the
position of women in society and their customary linguistic behaviour in
the past and today, respectively. The corpus compiled for the purposes of
this study consists of all utterances ascribed to the female characters when
they engage in verbal interactions with the other characters in the
analysed novels. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the
utterances is primarily based on the politeness strategies proposed by
Brown and Levinson in their Theory of Politeness (1978/1987). The
insights gained from the research indicate that women in these two
periods use different politeness strategies in addressing their
interlocutors, which, in turn, suggests that their perception of their own
identity and position in society has undergone tremendous changes from
the nineteenth century onwards, from submissiveness, supported by a
clear preference for indirect and negative politeness strategies towards
emancipation, bolstered by the use of direct and positive politeness
strategies.
Keywords: politeness strategies, women’s identity, Gothic novels

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	Scientific Fields (Frascati) > Humanities > Languages and literature
Divisions:	Faculty of Education
Depositing User:	Prof. d-r Silvana Neshkovska
Date Deposited:	20 Apr 2023 05:33
Last Modified:	20 Apr 2023 07:46
URI:	https://eprints.uklo.edu.mk/id/eprint/8123

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