Investigating Verbal Self-Impoliteness Speech Acts in Hamlet's Soliloquies

A Pragmatic Analysis

Authors

  • Asst. Prof. Sahira Mousa Salman MOHESR/ Research and Development Office/Iraq

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31973/gq1b6q26

Keywords:

pragmatic functions, self-impoliteness, Soliloquy

Abstract

Although there are studies on self-politeness, they cannot be considered sufficient to account for self- impoliteness since they have not tackled it directly and in details. As there is no previous model on self- impoliteness, and since self-politeness is studied in Leech (1983, 2014) and Chen (2001), and self-impoliteness is part of Culpeper (2010), the present study proposes an eclectic model that adapts Leech’s (1983, 2014) Politeness Principle, Chen’s (2001) Self-politeness, and Culpeper (2010) typology of conventionalized impolite formulae. In addition, Tokui’s (1995) functional categories of soliloquy are also adopted. This model is manipulated to pragmatically analyzing and investigating self-impoliteness in Hamlet’s soliloquies. The objectives addressed in this study are:

  1. to examine Self-impoliteness Speech Acts in Hamlet’s soliloquies.
  2. to investigate the functional categories of Hamlet's self-impolite speech acts in Soliloquies.
  3. to find out which of the self-impoliteness strategies and of the violated Self-politeness strategies are more frequent in Hamlet's soliloquies and why.

       The data of this study consist of (18) Self-impoliteness Speech acts in Hamlet’s soliloquies. The findings of this study showed that the frequently repeated Functional category of soliloquy is anger. The most frequently violated self-politeness maxims of the General Strategy of Politeness and self-politeness strategy were Baldly and Approbation respectively. While the widely used self-impoliteness strategy was Insult and its category the personalized negative reference.

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Published

2025-12-15

Issue

Section

English linguistics and literature

How to Cite

Salman , S. . (2025). Investigating Verbal Self-Impoliteness Speech Acts in Hamlet’s Soliloquies: A Pragmatic Analysis. Al-Adab Journal, 155, 21-50. https://doi.org/10.31973/gq1b6q26

Publication Dates

Received

2025-01-05

Revised

2025-01-12

Accepted

2025-01-21

Published Online First

2025-12-15

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