(Im)politeness in Grammar: A Cross-linguistic Study of English and Burmese
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14456/bej.2024.13Keywords:
English, grammar, (im)politeness, grammatical features inventory, Burmese (Myanmar)Abstract
This research focuses on how the phenomenon of (im) politeness innately embedded in grammar. It is aimed at presenting the commonalities and differences in the grammatical descriptions of (im)politeness in English and Burmese (Myanmar) languages cross-linguistically. Grammatical descriptions related to (im)politeness are studied from the point of view of Kibort and Greville’s (2008) inventory of grammatical features. A descriptive comparative research design is employed, and the text-driven elicitation method (Podesva and Sharma, 2013) is used for the data collection based on the English grammar books, Burmese (Myanmar) grammar books, and linguistic research on the Burmese (Myanmar) language. The results in this study not only provide the grammatical descriptions of (im) politeness but also point out the incomprehensiveness of Kibort and Greville’s (2008) inventory of grammatical features. From the point of view of the inventory of grammatical features, it is found that five grammatical features (Person, Respect, Tense, Aspect, and Mood) are related to (im)politeness. In addition, other four grammatical features related to (im)politeness (Conditionals, Imperative, Yes/no and short answers, and Question), which do not fit into the inventory of (im)politeness, are also investigated. Compared with the English language, the Burmese (Myanmar) language has fewer grammatical features of (im)politeness. It is hoped that this paper reinforces to a certain extent the new study area of (im)politeness from the grammatical side which is initiated by Culpeper (n.d.) and sheds light on the process of developing grammatical features inventory.
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