A Study of Elements of Linguistic Politeness in Qabousnameh Based on the Brown and Levinson Theory

Linguistic politeness is a phenomenon that is usually observed in everyday human interaction and shows how to use language to manage the interpersonal relationships of speakers. Qabousnameh is one of the most important texts of Persian didactic literature, which Onsor Al-Ma’āli wrote in forty-four chapters, with the aim of educating his son, Gilanshah, and his learning about social etiquette, knowledge, and techniques necessary for life, government, statehood, etc. Iranians have long cherished this book because of its didactic value and have used its anecdotes for educating their children. In this article the representation of linguistic politeness in Qabousnameh was studied using the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson. The findings showed that politeness was conceptualized as a social and cultural phenomenon in Qaboosnameh, which is the result of constructive interaction of individuals with mental, expressive and behavioral dimensions: in the mental dimension, consideration of audience and measuring the contextual situation and reflection on speech and its various meanings and effects; in the linguistic and expressive dimension, the standards of eloquence and the etiquette of speech; and in the behavioral dimension, the significant or influential negative and positive speech acts in language politeness were introduced and explained. In this paper, out of many cases that were studied in Qabousnameh, 27 examples were presented using the descriptive-analytical method and the pragmatic approach to the Brown and Levinson theory. According to the author of Qabousnameh, speech acts of the parties to the dialogue can save or threaten the face of the speaker and the audience; therefore, he proposed strategies to save or promote the face of the parties. Qabousnameh can be considered as one of the oldest texts in Persian literature, which mentions body language and the need for its proper use in linguistic interaction and interpersonal relationships.