Linguistic Politeness in the Selected Works of Jonathan Swif

Abstract

Politeness has been the common problem for all people in the world. People use language to communicate and to express their ideas. They need polite language to express themselves correctly and not to offend other people whom they talk to. This politeness problem has also been one of the concerns of the writers. As a result of power, age and gender, politeness is tried to be used in different context, different verbal interactions. It can be obviously seen in the most popular works of the world literature. The language that is used in that works indicates the manners of the particular time and it also helps to analyze those works linguistically. Politeness has been investigated many times from different perspectives, including literary works. As well as the works of Jonathan Swift have been subject for different type of linguistic analyses. However, these linguistic analyses do not include politeness aspect. Thus, the works of J. Swift will be the first one to be investigated from the politeness point of view. Politeness is obviously seen in the works of Jonathan Swift as one of the popular writers of 18th century. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the popular works of Jonathan Swift linguistically, to find the reason for such politeness in J. Swift’s works, to investigate and to explore politeness in different works of Jonathan Swift, like “A tale of tub”, “A modest proposal”, “Gulliver's Travels”.