Face threatening acts and politeness strategies by the Kenyan televangelists
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Date
2015-05
Authors
Kithure, Amalia Kabugi
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kenyatta University
Abstract
The focus of the study is politeness in televangelism. It aimed at finding out the
face threatening acts inherent in the televangelists' discourse, the politeness
strategies employed by the televangelists and the factors that influence their
choice of politeness strategies. Despite the fact that many politeness studies have
been carried out in the western countries and locally, no study specifically
focuses on the Face Threatening Acts and Politeness Strategies employed by the
Kenyan televangelists. The study made use of politeness theory developed by
Brown and Levinson (1978, 1983 and 1987) and Speech Act theory by Austin
(1962) as the basis of its theoretical framework. The background of the study
and the literature review shed light on some major studies done on politeness
both locally and internationally. The impetus to carry out this study was the fact
that the Kenyan TLVs have been criticized in social media for being impolite.
The data was collected by viewing and listening to video-recorded discourse of
five Kenyan televangelists on a television set. The time taken by each of the
televangelists was about 30 minutes, and the total duration was about two and
half hours. The data was then transcribed on paper and the FTAs, Politeness
Strategies and the factors influencing the choice of politeness strategies elicited,
and then presented on frequency tables according to their categories. They were
then analysed qualitatively and then summarised using descriptive statistics. The
sampling methods used were purposive and random sampling. The sample was
composed of two female and three male televangelists who telecast their
sermons on four Kenyan TV channels: (KEC, NTV, KTN, and Citizen TV).The
topics covered by the five televangelists were: 'Midnight Prayer', 'Ingredients
for Victorious Living', 'Lameness', 'Unity' and 'The Tabernacle'. The findings
revealed that the televangelists are polite. Though they used many face
threatening acts, they also employed many politeness strategies that mitigate the
face threats and create cordial relations with the hearers. Orders, requests,
challenges, advice, promises, criticisms, accusations and reminders occurred in
the TLVs' discourse. However, the televangelists employed all the four
politeness strategies: positive, negative, bald-on-record and off-record. The
factors that influenced the televangelists' choice of politeness strategies were the
pay-offs, relative power, social distance and social ranking.
Description
A dissertation submitted to the department of English and linguistics in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Master of Arts of Kenyatta University. May 2015