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Exponents of politeness in Brunei English
Author(s) -
HO DEBBIE G. E.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-971x.2008.01568.x
Subject(s) - modal verb , politeness , linguistics , context (archaeology) , pragmatics , action (physics) , modal , psychology , premise , verb , english as a lingua franca , plaintiff , newspaper , sociology , history , political science , lingua franca , media studies , law , philosophy , physics , chemistry , archaeology , quantum mechanics , polymer chemistry
This paper is based on the premise that not much is known about how English modal verbs are used to express politeness in Non‐Native English speaking (NNEs) contexts. It explores the use of the past and non‐past forms of the request modals will and can in Brunei, a NNEs country located in Southeast Asia. Specifically, it examines the use of these modals in the Request for Corrective Action (RCA) move in personal complaints written to the local English‐language newspaper by local Bruneian speakers of English. In addition, reasons for a particular usage are extrapolated from those elicited from a questionnaire carried out among local university students. This paper provides an exploratory study of modal verb use from a pragmatics perspective, with the purpose of investigating the extent to which the request modal verbs will/would and can/could express the attitudes of the complainant when it comes to requesting corrective action in complaints of a personal nature. The findings yielded a number of surprising observations that highlight the different ways in which these English request modal verbs are perceived and used in a NNEs context.