Strategic Politeness in Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables

Abstract

Linguistic politeness has been shown, over the last few decades, to be a successful device for studying literaturelinguistically. In addition to establishing and asserting identity and achieving goals, linguistic politeness is a meansof studying social interaction to establish social, harmonious and friendly relationships among interactants. Thisstudy aims at investigating Anne's social interaction in Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, which has a verypowerful meaning in children's literature, and her relation with others as she grows up and as she develops frombeing a socially marginalized female character to a productive contributing citizen of Avonlea. Brown andLevinson's pragmatic theory of politeness (1987), in addition to some other subsequent contributions, provide theanalytical tools to guide this approach, which correspondingly analyses the range of face-threatening acts performed(represented via directives), the forms of redressive actions taken to counter those threats represented in the form oflinguistic strategies and the reasons and goals that substantiate the use of such forms in relation to social roles. Thevalue of the study can be estimated not only by those working within the branches of linguistics or literature, but alsoit can be of value to EFL/ESL learners especially those who study the novel as part of their curriculum.