Verbal strategies and interpersonal meanings of impolite metapragmatic comments in Kirundi fictional conversations

Abstract

Interpersonal relationships are enacted during interaction where they are created, maintained, or transformed through language use. Whereas it has been argued in linguistic pragmatic studies that impoliteness is used to exercise power, little has been done to show how power relations are contextually challenged and readjusted between interactants by means of their impolite talk. This study, situated in sociopragmatics within linguistic pragmatics, sought to fill the gap by analyzing how participants in Kirundi fictional conversations used impolite metapragmatic comments (MPCs) to exercise power, readjust and redefine power relations between them. The objectives of the study were to examine lexically encoded impolite MPCs and their implicated meanings of power relations, to analyze impolite MPCs involving grammatical manipulations and the meanings of power relations they convey, and to examine impolite MPCs with rhetorical strategies and their use to express power relations. The philosophical stance of this study was social constructivism, considering meanings as socially constructed between human beings. The research was qualitative in nature. It is an inquiry into verbal strategies and interpersonal meanings in impolite metacommunication. The study looked into the meanings of power relations negotiated between Kirundi fictional interactants through impolite MPCs. The Discourse Analysis method was used in the study. The theory underpinning the study was Jonathan Culpeper’s Sociocognitive Model for Understanding Impoliteness. Using purposive sampling, the researcher collected 41 Kirundi fictional texts in which impolite MPCs were used, comprising 30 excerpts of audio-recorded conversations from Ninde plays, 10 excerpts of written conversations from ‘written plays’ and 1 excerpt of a written conversation from the category ‘other written texts’, the number of which was determined by the criterion of thematic saturation during the iterative process of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. The findings of the study indicated that impoliteness in interaction is closely associated with the exercise of power, in agreement with previous studies. Besides, it was found that speakers used different linguistic and rhetorical strategies in impolite MPCs to evaluate speech as inappropriate and to exercise power, often in the sense of readjusting power relations. Lexically, speakers manipulated an array of verbs to express different negative evaluations of their co-communicators’ speech behavior. Morphological strategies included the use of augmentative and diminutive affixes, coinage, and compounding. Syntactic choices were also made like the manipulation of modality, lexical and clausal substitution, and elliptical and evidential constructions. Finally, speakers used the rhetorical devices of repetition, parallelism, irony, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, metonymy, as well as wordplay expressed as phonetic play, sounds in onomatopoeic form and homonymy. The findings showed that intensification or more markedness of impoliteness in MPCs implied their use to achieve readjustment or redefinition of power relations. The study filled the gap concerning how interactants challenge power relations via linguistic means and in context. It concluded that impoliteness is strongly associated with exercise of power and that contextually relevant linguistic and/or rhetorical strategies contribute to either reinforcing or challenging power relations.