Investigating Verbal Self-Impoliteness Speech Acts in Hamlet's Soliloquies
A Pragmatic Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31973/gq1b6q26Keywords:
pragmatic functions, self-impoliteness, SoliloquyAbstract
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:
- to examine Self-impoliteness Speech Acts in Hamlet’s soliloquies.
- to investigate the functional categories of Hamlet's self-impolite speech acts in Soliloquies.
- 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.
Downloads
References
Aydınoğlu, N. 2013. Politeness and Impoliteness Strategies: An Analysis of Gender Differences in Geralyn l. Horton's Plays. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83, 473-482. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.06.093
Bousfield, D. 2008. Impoliteness in Interaction, Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing Company DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.167
Bousfield, D., Culpeper, J. (Eds.), 2008. Impoliteness: Eclecticism and Diaspora. An Introduction to the Special Edition. Journal of Politeness Research 4, 161–168. Url: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/JPLR.2008.008/html. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/JPLR.2008.008
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813085
Brown, R. and Gilman, A.1989. Politeness theory and Shakespeare's four major tragedies. Language in Society 18, 159-212. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500013464
Chen, R. 2001. Self-politeness: a proposal. Journal of Pragmatics 33(1): 87-106. Url: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378216699001241. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00124-1
Culpeper, J. 1996. Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 25: 349-367.Url: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0378216695000143. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(95)00014-3
Culpeper, J. 2005. Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The Weakest Link. Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behavior, Culture 1, 35-72.Url: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/371848.pdf. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2005.1.1.35
Culpeper, J. 2010. Conventionalized Impoliteness Formulae. Journal of Pragmatics: 42, 3232–3245. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.05.007
Culpeper, J. 2011. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975752
Culpeper, J., Bousfield, D. and Wichmann, A. 2003. Impoliteness revisited: with special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics 35, 1545-1579. Url: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317173237_Impoliteness. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00118-2
Fraser, B. 1990. Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 14, 219–236. Url: https://www.scirp.org/reference/ReferencesPapers?ReferenceID=1285219. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(90)90081-N
Fraser, B., and W. Nolen. 1981. The Association of Deference with Linguistic Form. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 27, 93–109. Url: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ijsl.1981.27.93/html DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.1981.27.93
Grice, P. 1975. Logic and conversation. In: Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan, eds., Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. 41-58 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004368811_003
Hasegawa, Y. 2010. Soliloquy in Japanese and English. ix, 230. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.202
Holmes, Janet. 2006. Sharing a laugh: pragmatic aspects of humour and gender in the workplace. Journal of Pragmatics 38, 26–50. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.06.007
Huang, Y. 2007. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Jie, W. and Feifei, W. 2016. The application of politeness principle in the analysis of drama: Take Teahouse as an example, Cross-Cultural Communication, 12, 35-38.
Leech, G. 1983. Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.
Leech, J. 2022. The Main Concepts of Politeness in Modern Linguapragmatics: the Politeness Principle. Website: https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ijpCopyright.
Locher, M. 2006. Polite Behaviour within Relational Work: Discursive Approach to Politeness. Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication. 25(3), 249-267.Url: https://web.archive.org/web/20181102111620id_/https://edoc.unibas.ch/11514/1/20131011104830_5257bb5e2b421.pdf. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/MULTI.2006.015
Locher, M. A., and R. J. Watts. 2008. Relational work and impoliteness: Negotiating norms
of linguistic behavior. In Bousfield and Locher, eds., 77-99.
Locher, M., Bousfield, D., 2008. Introduction: impoliteness and power in language. In: Bousfield, D., Locher, M. (Eds.), Impoliteness in Language: Studies on Its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin,1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110208344.0.1
Mills, S .2003. Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615238
Mills, S. 2005. Gender and impoliteness. Journal of Politeness Research 1 (1), 263–280. Url: https://www.academia.edu/5047991/Sara_Mills_2003_Gender_and_politeness_Cambridge_Cambridge_UniversityPress_270_pp_ISBN_Hb_0_521_81084_1_Pb_0_521_00919_7
Mirhosseini, M. ; Mardanshahi, M.; and Dowlatabadi, H. 2017. Impoliteness Strategies Based on Culpeper’s Model: An Analysis of Gender Differences between Two Characters in the movie Mother. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research Volume 4, Issue 3, 2017,221-238. Url: http://www.jallr.com/index.php/JALLR/article/view/579.
Murphy S. E. 2015. Am I politic? (Im)politeness in Shakespeare’s Soliloquies. PALA, University of Kent. p. 1-19. 19.
Nasrin, F., Hasan, M., Rahman, M., Begum, K.; Ullah, A. 2016. William Shakespeare: Soliloquies and Asides in Hamlet. Language and Literature (IJSELL) Volume 4, Issue 10, October, PP 82-92 www.arcjournals.org. Url: https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijsell/v4-i10/13.pdf DOI: https://doi.org/10.20431/2347-3134.0410013
Rudanko, J. 2006. Aggravated impoliteness and two types of speaker intention in an episode in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Journal of Pragmatics 38(6), 829–841. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.11.006
Shakespeare, William. 1968. Hamlet. Edited by Bernard Lott. London: Longman Group Ltd.
Spencer-Oatey, H., P. Ng, and D. Li. 2008. British and Chinese reactions to compliment
responses. In Spencer-Oatey, ed., 95–117.
Thomas, J. 1995. Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Tokui, A. 1995. Hitorigoto” ni okeru joseigo no shiyoo hi-shiyoo o megutte. Shinshu University Journal of the Faculty of Liberal Arts 29, 65–75.
Washi, R. 1997. Shuujoshi to hatsuwa-ruikei: Tokyo-go shuujosi “wa” to “na” no danwa ni
Watts, R. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Sahira Salman

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright and Licensing:
For all articles published in Al-Adab journal, copyright is retained by the authors. Articles are licensed under an open access Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, meaning that anyone may download and read the paper for free. In addition, the article may be reused and quoted provided that the original published version is cited. These conditions allow for maximum use and exposure of the work.
Reproducing Published Material from other Publishers: It is absolutely essential that authors obtain permission to reproduce any published material (figures, schemes, tables or any extract of a text) which does not fall into the public domain, or for which they do not hold the copyright. Permission should be requested by the authors from the copyrightholder (usually the Publisher, please refer to the imprint of the individual publications to identify the copyrightholder).
Permission is required for: Your own works published by other Publishers and for which you did not retain copyright.
Substantial extracts from anyones' works or a series of works.
Use of Tables, Graphs, Charts, Schemes and Artworks if they are unaltered or slightly modified.
Photographs for which you do not hold copyright.
Permission is not required for: Reconstruction of your own table with data already published elsewhere. Please notice that in this case you must cite the source of the data in the form of either "Data from..." or "Adapted from...".
Reasonably short quotes are considered fair use and therefore do not require permission.
Graphs, Charts, Schemes and Artworks that are completely redrawn by the authors and significantly changed beyond recognition do not require permission.
Obtaining Permission
In order to avoid unnecessary delays in the publication process, you should start obtaining permissions as early as possible. If in any doubt about the copyright, apply for permission. Al-Adab Journal cannot publish material from other publications without permission.
The copyright holder may give you instructions on the form of acknowledgement to be followed; otherwise follow the style: "Reproduced with permission from [author], [book/journal title]; published by [publisher], [year].' at the end of the caption of the Table, Figure or Scheme.



