Politeness in Arabic Culture

Abstract

—As soon as we want to speak, we must constantly make choices of many different kinds of e.g. what we want to say, how we want to say it. Specifically, we must choose what sentence types, words, and even sounds best unite the what with the how. How we say something is at least as important as what we say. In fact, the content and form are quite inseparable, being but two facets of the same object. According to Thomas (1995), the past twenty years within pragmatics there has been a great deal of interest in 'politeness', to such an extent that politeness theory could almost be seen as a sub-discipline of pragmatics. Then Thomas claims that, much has been written (comparatively little based on empirical research) and different theories and paradigms have emerged. Thomas adds, that we find people are using the same terms in very different ways, are operating with different definitions of 'politeness' and are talking at cross-purposes. Thomas (1970) argues, that within the vast literature on politeness which has built up since the late 1970s we find tremendous confusion. The confusion begins with the very term politeness, which has caused much misunderstanding. (Thomas, 1970, p. 149).