A DOMAIN BASED PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF LINGUISTIC POLITENESS STRATEGIES OF LWISUKHA

Abstract

The proposed study aims to analyse the linguistic politeness strategies used in Lwisukha; one of the eighteen dialects of the Luhya language spoken by the people of Western Kenya in selected domains. These domains include: local public meetings, religious services and the business setting. The study will be guided by the Politeness Theory by Brown and Levinson (1987). The proposed study will review literature on politeness, the gap identified in literature review will necessitate the study to exploit more on the topic. Descriptive research design will be used to describe the different linguistic politeness strategies that will be observed and identified from the data that will be collected during fieldwork. The study is limited to nineteen local public meetings, ten churches and six market places in the indigenous area of Kakamega East Sub County. Data in the local public meetings and the religious services will be collected using a structured observation schedule; and in the business setting, audio-visual recordings will be used in order to cater for both verbal and non-verbal linguistic politeness strategies. The collected data will be transcribed, and the different realizations of linguistic politeness strategies be identified, described and analysed qualitatively. The proposed study will significantly enhance the preservation of Lwisukha language. The linguistic politeness strategies identified will add to the existing literature done on politeness and may also be included in the writing of business journals in order to enlighten business people on ways of handling their customers.