POLITENESS PHENOMENON IN ADICHIE’S HALF OF A YELLOW SUN

Abstract

Adichie’s remarkable creative, imaginative, and research abilities as well as brevity have coalesced into Half of a Yellow Sun (HOAYS) - an epic on moral responsibility with ethnic allegiance, and how these could be complicated by love. This paper examines the structures and codes of the novel with a view to depicting and highlighting what politeness can do and how interlocutors tactically employ language in promoting peace, growth and development through politeness principles.  In so doing, the study utilises Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Principles and Giles’ (1991) Communication Accommodation Theory to show how face-saving acts manifest in the use of apology, questions with modal verbs, honorifics and hesitations. From the analysis, it can be seen that the utterances of some of Adichie’s characters are characterized by insults, peremptory commands, overbearing interrogations without any linguistic redress, undue punishment that erode societal peace.