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چکیده
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Politeness strategies are utilized by people in order to achieve and maintain successful social relationships with others, and to avoid or minimize conflicts in social relations. The objective of this research is to identify and analyze positive and negative politeness strategies used by the main characters throughout Hugh Howey’s Wool (2011) as discussed by Brown and Levinson (1987). The findings revealed that thirteen of the fifteen positive politeness strategies were found in the novel, and these include: notice, attend to hearer; intensify interest to hearer; use in-group identity markers; seek agreement; avoid disagreement; presuppose/raise/assert common ground; assert or presuppose speaker’s knowledge of and concern to hearer’s wants; offer, promise; be optimistic; include both speaker and hearer in the activity; give (or ask for) reasons; assume or assert reciprocity; and give gifts to hearer. Meanwhile, of the ten negative politeness strategies, seven were found: be conventionally indirect; question, hedge; be pessimistic; minimize the imposition; give deference; apologize; and impersonalize speaker and hearer. Set in a giant and mysterious underground silo in a dystopian future with very limited resources, Wool portrays a society where consistent cooperation among the people for the general shared goal of survival of mankind is essential. The study concludes that this necessity results in a minimal social distance between individuals. With such minimum social distance in a community, positive politeness strategies prevail, signifying in-group solidarity among the Silo residents, as these strategies are employed either when the social distance is already minimal or it is intended to become so.
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