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POLITENESS IN SERVICE ENCOUNTERS: A STUDY 

OF NIGERIAN PIDGIN 

 

Karoh Ativie 

Department of English and Literary Studies , 

Delta State University, Abraka, Delta State. 

Email: karohativie@yahoo.com 

Abstract 

The study identifies and describes politeness strategies in 

Nigerian Pidgin service encounters. The study applies 

descriptive qualitative research. Data was collected in Warri, a 

cosmopolitan city in Delta State, Southern Nigeria from six 

service encounter settings: restaurants, hair dressing saloons, 

fuel stations, boutiques, market stalls and supermarkets. It is in 

the form of recorded conversations between service providers 

and their customers. Seventy service encounters were 

observed.The data was then transcribed and different realizations 

of politeness strategies were identified and described using 

Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson’s model of politeness. 

The study shows that the most frequently used strategy is the 

positive politeness strategy of greeting while the least used are 

seeking agreement and promises. For negative politeness, 

deference strategies constitute the most used strategies while 

apologies are the least used. 

Keywords: Politeness, service encounters, Nigerian Pidgin, 

positive politeness, negative politeness 

Introduction 

Politeness is a culturally defined phenomenon which can be 

described as the application of good manners in social 

interaction. It involves taking account of the feelings of others 

mailto:karohativie@yahoo.com


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and making them feel comfortable. Kuang, Lau and Ang (2012) 

believe that politeness is a key element in service encounters 

particularly from service providers as they are the first line of 

people meeting prospective customers.  

Politeness phenomena have become a fruitful field of linguistic 

research over the last three decades. Studies have dealt with a 

broad range of issues such as the universality and culturally 

specific nature of linguistic politeness (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 

2006.), gendered politeness practices (Brown, 1980; Holmes, 

1995;  Lakoff, 1975; Mills, 2000, 2003 ) and the concept of face 

in the interaction of cultural, social and regional groups in a 

variety of contexts (Bailey,1997; Callahan, 2006; Kidwel,2000 

).One area that has received little attention in the field of 

politeness is the examination of politeness strategies in Nigerian 

Pidgin service encounters. It is this gap in knowledge that this 

study intends to fill. Although the data contains instances of 

impoliteness, this study focuses on politeness alone. 

Theoretical Framework 

The particular model to be adopted for this study is that 

proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987). Their theory revolves 

around the following aspects: face, face work and acts that 

threaten face, sociological variables influencing face threat, and 

five general ways or super strategies of counterbalancing face 

threat with specific linguistic strategies. Their notion of face 

consists of two opposing wants: (i) negative face, the want that 

one’s action be unimpeded by others, and (ii) positive face, the 

want that one’s wants be desirable to others. To them, the 

amount and kind of politeness that is required for a certain 

conversational activity is determined by the ‘weightiness’( the 

serious of the offence) that doing the act may cause. They 

suggest two main strategies –positive politeness strategies and 

negative politeness strategies-realizable in linguistic forms to 



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satisfy the two face needs. Positive politeness strategies function 

to satisfy the positive face needs while negative politeness 

strategies satisfy negative face needs of conversational partners. 

Brown and Levinson argue that their concept of politeness is 

universal. 

 

(Fig. 1: Possible strategies of performing FTAs (Brown and 

Levinson, 1987) 

Methodology 

This study adopts a descriptive qualitative design.  The data 

consist of a corpus of audio-recorded service encounters taken 

from a variety of interactional contexts. The service encounters 

last from 2-5 minutes and the data collection period is six 

months in total. During the data collection process, seventy 

service encounters are observed. The participants who were 

recorded for this study consist of adult Nigerian Pidgin speakers 

from different walks of life. 

Data Analysis and Discussion 

The data was coded and classified according to the categories of 

positive and negative politeness by Brown and Levinson. For 

positive politeness, the data reveals twelve strategies for positive 

politeness and three strategies for negative politeness. This is 

seen in Table 1 below. The frequency distribution of these 

strategies can also be found in the table. It shows that the 



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greeting strategy is the most frequently (23 times: 32.86%) used, 

followed by Give gifts to Hearer/Thanking (7times:10%). The 

data also shows that interlocutors also used in-group identity 

markers or language to enhance solidarity. This was used (20) 

twentytimes (28.57%). The least frequent positive politeness 

strategies used are Agreement, Assert knowledge of hearer’s 

wants and Promise (2.86%, 4.29% and2.86% respectively). For 

negative politeness , only three negative politeness strategies are 

identified with the most frequent strategy being the use of  

deference strategies(56.60%) while the use of the  apologize 

strategy constitutes the least(15.09%). 

POSITIVE POLITENESS NEGATIVE POLITENESS 

Strategy 

Type 

Number Frequency/ 

Percentage 

Strategy Type Number Frequency/

Percentage 

Greetings 23 32.86 Deference/ 

Honorifics 

30 56.60 

Seeking 

agreement 

2 2.86 Minimizing 

the imposition 
15 

28.30 

Assert 

knowledge 

of hearer’s 

wants 

3 4.29 

Apologize 

8 

15.09 

Give 

Reasons 
4 5.71 

   

Give gifts 

to Hearer/ 

Thanking 

7 10.00 

   



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Notice/ 

Attend to 

H’s interest 

 

4 5.71 

   

Promise 

 

2 2.86    

Small Talk 
4 5.71    

In-group 

identity 

markers. 

20 28.57 
   

Joke 
1 1.43    

Total 
70 100.00 Total 53 100.00 

Table 1 Distribution of Positive and Negative Politeness Strategies 

 Positive Politeness 

 Notice/Attend to H’s Interest 

This strategy suggests that speaker is to take notice of the 

addressee’s condition, physical changes or states as well as the 

physical items he/she has in his/her possession. This is seen in 

the conversation below: 

Example 1(At a fuel station) 

SP: Mama. You no drive? Na Keke you enter? You don tire to 

drive? 

CUS: Yes o. Driving tire me. 

 

Promise 
Brown and Levinson(1987,p.125) state that  promises “claim 

that whatever H wants, S wants for him and will help him to 

obtain it,” so as to “illustrate S’s good intentions in satisfying 



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H’s positive-face wants” .  An example is seen in Example (2) 

where the hair dresser promises to improve the quality of her 

customer’s hair. 

Example 2(At the hair dressing saloon) 

SP: After this one, she go braid hair. I go stretch am. She no go 

retouch the hair.  

Some time, even you go surprise when you see the hair. You sef 

go regret wetin make you retouch your hair. 

The statement above shows that the speaker (i.e. the hair stylist) 

has acknowledged that a particular customer wants to improve 

her hair quality and promises that the treatment she recommends 

will satisfy this want.  

Greetings 

In the Nigerian society, greeting exchanges are mostly initiated 

by the younger people to older ones or by lower status people to 

higher status ones. In a context involving equals, either party 

could greet first. The opening sequences of most interactions in 

the data are characterized by greetings as seen below:  

Example 3 (At a supermarket) 

SP:     Welcome ma .Wetin you want? 

CUS: Give me Lady soap 

In this example, the service provider initiates the greeting by 

welcoming the customer to her shop. This is common in service 

encounter settings and each instance of the greeting gives face 

support to both parties. Besides acknowledging the presence of 

other people, greetings can also be used to establish rapport 

before moving to on discuss major issues. Other greeting terms 



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found in the data are the use of “How now? “How far?” 

“Welcome” and ‘Welldone” by interlocutors.  

Seek Agreement 

This is done by choosing a safe topic or by finding aspects of a 

topic that can be agreed upon. For instance, if the speaker does 

not agree or approve of some aspect of an action, or the action as 

a whole, he/she finds something in it to agree upon. 

Example 4(In a salon) 

SP: I wan make your natural hair come out. After all, you dey 

use weave on cover am. Shey you hear? 

In the utterance above, the positive face redress manifests itself 

in the structure of the utterance. First the problematic hair issue 

is introduced. The utterance ‘After all, you dey use weave on 

cover am’  is face threatening since it may cause the customer 

some inconvenience .However, the threat is mitigated by the 

following expression ‘Shey you hear?’ to further persuade the 

customer . 

Give Gifts to Hearer 
Discourse participants appreciate one another and show 

gratitude for something done. The commonest form of 

appreciation is “Thank you’ as seen in the example below: 

Example 5(In a boutique) 

CUS: How much for dis shirt? 

SP: One thousand eight hundred naira. 

CUS: No o. 

SP: How much you get? 



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CUS: Plus dat jeans give me two thousand, five hundred naira. 

SP: Ha, you wan drive me from market. 

CUS: Give me one thousand, five hundred for the shirt, the 

jeans, two thousand. 

SP: Bros na two thousand, eight hundred I get last. 

SP: Oya give me three thousand because I know you. 

CUS:  Ok, thank you bros. 

Assert Knowledge of Hearer’s Wants 

Example 6(In a market stall) 

SP: Mummy, see this one. Na this type all the students wey wan 

do practical dey buy 

CUS: The shine shine for the material too much. E go dey gum 

person bodi. 

SP: No, dis na the original. E no dey fall comot o. Na as e be e 

go be. 

CUS: As e be so na how much? 

SP: Seven fifty ma. 

Sympathy 

This is subsumed under Brown and Levinson’s strategy 15 ‘Give 

gifts to H’. According to them ‘a speaker may satisfy H’s 

positive face wants to be liked, admired, cared about and 

listened to’(129) . This is illustrated in the following 

conversation: 



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Example 7(In a restaurant) 

CUS: Salt too plenti for the Egusi soup. Na manage I manage 

take eat am. 

SP:   Eh sorry o.Mesef I no dey add plenty salt for my soup apart 

from when I steam de meat. E be like sey na my children add 

over salt for de meat’ 

Give Reasons 

By adopting this strategy, the speaker lets the hearer know why 

he/she wants what he/she wants, so that the hearer can see that 

the potentially face-threatening act is actually reasonable. 

Accordingly, the speaker assumes that the hearer has no good 

reason not to cooperate. 

Example 8(In a hair dressing saloon) 

SP: I like dat one pass 

CUS: E dey different. Make I see am 

SP: I like dis one pass. Na im plenty pass. 

CUS:E no mean anything for woman head. 

SP: E mean o. As woman, you must buy the weave-on weydey 

in vogue 

CUS: I beg sell for me. I no wan de one wey dey in vogue and 

the wan wey de on board. 

SP: Abeg go jo. Wetin you know. Buy wetin I show you. 

In the example above, the reasons in the data are oriented toward 

the positive face of the addressee by presupposing his/her wants 



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and needs. In the dialogue, we can clearly appreciate the 

persuasive function of language as the speaker tries to win her 

customer over. 

Small Talk 

Another strategy of positive politeness referred to by Brown and 

Levinson as ‘making small talk’ is attested to in the data. The 

main function of making small talk before actually saying what 

one wants to say is to ‘avoid intruding on the hearer, for to 

intrude on the hearer would be to violate one of the implicit 

contractual terms of conversation’(Adegbija, 1989,p.3). Such 

small talk functions as a mediator between the speaker and his 

/her actual message and the hearer; it purposefully fills the gap, 

thereby reducing the abruptness proceeding directly to one’s 

message. This is seen in the conversation below: 

Example 9(In a medicine store) 

SP: Madam, good evening. You wan buy sometin? 

CUS: Ehh.  Good evening. 

SP: Long time I neva see you. Where you dey now? 

CUS: I travel before. 

SP:  Welcome. How dat side? 

CUS: Fine. You get antibiotics 

In this example and similar ones in the data, the use of small talk 

functions to reduce the abruptness of the interaction. 

In-group identity markers. 



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By using in-group membership markers, the speaker stresses his 

or her common ground with the hearer . 

Example 10(In a boutique) 

CUS:Bros, welldone! I dey hail o bros. 

SP: Eh my oga, welcome. Wetin dey happen na? 

 

Jokes 

As jokes are generally based on shared background knowledge 

and values, they are a positive politeness strategy aimed at 

putting the hearer at ease or to soften the face threatening act. 

Example 11 (In a Hair dressing saloon) 

CUS: I no go take dis money o. 

SP: Wetin do am? 

CUS: E tear. Give me another one. 

SP: Na God money. For offering. 

CUS: Abeg give me. If you wan give God money, go heaven 

In this exchange, the customer refuses to collect the torn naira 

note given to her as change by the hair dresser. Instead she 

demands for the newer notes in the hair dresser’s possession. 

The hair dresser refuses, saying that she is reserving the new 

notes to be used as offering in church on Sunday(God 

money).The customer , bent on collecting the new naira notes 

from her replies: If you wan give God money , go heaven’ and 

collects the money from her.  

NEGATIVE POLITENESS  



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Deference 

Deference is a double sided phenomenon which finds 

manifestation either in the lowering of the self or the raising of 

the other or both at a time.  Yule (1985:60) calls it ‘formal 

politeness’ in which compliments, greetings and modes of 

address or honorifics are included. Ofori (2016:31) observes that 

“the use of deferential honorific terms of address forms is one of 

the techniques used as persuasive strategies especially in 

bargaining talk exchanges”. The most common honorifics in the 

data are Mummy, Madam, Oga, Aunty, Ma, and Sir. These terms 

have become verbal manifestations of politeness in service 

encounters discourse as reflected in the example below: 

Example 12 (In a hair dressing saloon) 

CUS:  How now? 

SP: Mummy, Good afternoon. 

CUS: Na only you dey here? 

SP: Na only me dey o. You wan do your hair? 

CUS: Yes 

SP: (To attendant) Help Mummy loose her hair. 

Brown and Levinson (1987) also note that address forms are 

used to convey in group membership. The most common forms 

used by the service providers in the data are ‘Customer’, ‘Bros’ 

and ‘Chairman’. 

Apologize 

By apologizing, the speaker indicates his/her reluctance to 

commit the face-threatening act while actually committing it; 



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this to some extent redresses the imposition. This can be done by 

admitting frankly what kind of impingement is expected, by 

indicating reluctance, by asking for forgiveness, or by giving an 

overwhelming reason for why the hearer has to commit the face-

threatening act.  

Example 13 (In a restaurant) 

CUS:  Madam, salt too plenti for the Egusi soup. Na manage I 

manage take eat am. 

SP: Eh sorry o. Me sef I no dey add plenty salt for my soup apart 

from when I steam de meat. E be like sey na my children add 

over salt for de meat. Abeg no vex. 

CUS: No wahala. Just take note in case of next time 

Minimizing the Imposition 

In this case, the speaker implies that the imposition is not great 

by using a culturally acceptable word or expression to do so. In 

Nigerian Pidgin, this can often be seen in the use of ‘Abeg or 

Helep me(Help me)’to minimize the imposition of the request as 

in 17 : 

Example14    (In a drugstore) 

CUS: Auntie, abeg check this paper for me. Wetin be this one. 

100 mg? 

SP: All of them na 100mg. 

The foregoing shows that politeness is about being tactful and 

considerate for the plight of others in any social interaction. This 

affirms that everybody has a ‘face’ to protect in every social 

interaction.  



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Conclusion 

This study was concerned with politeness in Nigerian Pidgin 

service encounters. It has shown that every language use is a 

reflection of the norms of the socio-cultural environment in 

which it functions. It has shown that social factors like 

solidarity, social status, age, power, distance affect politeness 

strategies in Nigerian Pidgin. It has also shown that there are 

socio-cultural manifestations of politeness in Nigerian Pidgin 

and illustrated how politeness is expressed in greetings, thanks, 

apologies and deference .  

Works Cited 

Adegbija, E.E “A Comparative Study of Politeness Phenomena 

in Nigerian English, Yoruba and Ogori”. Multilingua 

Journal of Cross-Cultural and Inter language 

Communication. 1989.  57-80. 

Brown ,  P and  Levinson, S. Politeness: Some Universals in 

Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 1989. 

Kuang, C.H.,  David, M.K.,  Lau, S,K and Ang, P.S. “Polite or 

Impolite ? An Analysis of Openings and Closings used 

by Front Counter Staff of Private Hospitals” 

International Proceedings of Economics Development 

and Research, 34:167-171. (2012). 

Ofori ,E. A. “A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Expressions of 

Politeness in Spoken   Akan Discourse: A Case of 

Bargaining in Akan Market Setting”. International 

Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics, 

Volume 12 (1): 24-36. (2016)   

Yule, G. The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 1985.         

 

 


