Journal of Language and Literature

Vol. 19 No. 2 – October 2019 ISSN: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online)

Face Management and Issues of Power, Solidarity, and
Distance: Socio-Pragmatic Influences on Literary
Discourses

V. Vinod Kumar, Vijay Singh Thakur & Justin James

vinod@bdu.ac.in, vijay_thakur@du.edu.om, justin.james@nct.edu.om

Department of English, Bharathidasan University, India;
College of Arts and Applied Sciences, Dhofar University, Sultanate of Oman;

Nizwa College of Technology, Sultanate of Oman.

Abstract

Literature, in many ways, reflects human societies. Literature is mainly a linguistic and aesthetic

reflection of how human beings conduct their personal and social lives. The use of language by nature is
a social activity. Human beings conduct all aspects of their lives through language. In the backdrop of this
premise, human communication is, by nature, social communication. Furthermore, language is shaped by
societies and, in turn, societies are also shaped by the language they shape. The human communication
functions and works on the social aspects related to who speaks to whom, when, in what language, where,
how, and for what purpose. In all contexts, the sociolinguistic aspects of power principle, solidarity
principle, distance, and face management play an influential role in determining the tenor, tone and mode
of communication. This paper attempts to examine, analyze and discuss the socio-pragmatic perspectives
that shape, guide, and give direction to inter-personal human communication. This analytical discussion
of the socio-pragmatic aspects of language use will be carried out through sociolinguistic analyses of
dialogic discourses from the magnum opus A Suitable Boy (ASB) authored by Vikram Seth, which is
considered to be an authentic socio-cultural document of India.

Keywords: face management, power principle, socio-pragmatic influences, solidarity principle

Introduction

Linguistics, literature, and human

communication have been gravitating towards
each other for a long time in order to develop
and build meaningful communicative routes.
This paper primarily aims at studying how
context-bound discursive discourse practices
involve operations of power, solidarity, and
face management to construct or deconstruct a
variety of identities. Such an analytical process
of literary texts sensitizes and raises our
awareness of various discourse patterns in
everyday human communication with a view to
developing human capacities to examine and
judge the inter-personal relationships and
human societies carefully based on the

personal motifs of characters’ and their socio-
cultural milieus. Incidentally, the use of
pragmatic interpretive strategies can afford
new insights linked with the nature of literary
communication, which are not possible by
subjecting it to the traditional structural
analysis of literary texts simply because it does
not take into account the sociolinguistic aspects
that play a pivotal role in shaping the ongoing
discourse in human communication.

This paper, planned in a socio-pragmatic

analytical framework, is organized and
presented in the following four parts: (a) The
introductory part sets the tone and tenor of the
paper. (b) The second part briefly discusses the
review of related studies to serve as a

mailto:vinod@bdu.ac.in
mailto:vijay_thakur@du.edu.om
mailto:justin.james@nct.edu.om

Journal of Language and Literature

ISSN: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) V. Vinod Kumar, Vijay Singh Thakur & Justin James

theoretical foundation for the analytical
discussion initiated and evolved in the paper.
(c) The third part is devoted to the socio-
pragmatic analysis of the dialogic discourses
retrieved form ASB. (c) The last part focuses on
drawing concluding remarks and discussing
emerging implications from the analytical
discussion and critical interpretations of the
findings.

Review of Related Studies

A scientific approach to textual analysis

views the literary text as a carefully crafted and
orderly object that contains formal and
observable communicative patterns. In this
objective approach, the act of close analytical
reading of the text becomes the primary focus
to understand and appreciate literature and
draw inferential chains of interpretation to
examine the human connections and relations
based on the social principles of solidarity and
distance and the principle of power and face
management.

The first theoretical framework that lends

focus and direction to the analytical discussion
in this paper is Critical Discourse Analysis
(CDA). CDA, based on the works of Fairclough
and Wodak (1997) and Wodak (2000),
considers language as a discursive practice and
places the primary importance on the context
of language use in human communication. CDA
is based on the central argument that human
discourse is tied with, shaped and reshaped by
social structure, which includes social class,
relative status of the interlocutors, their age,
ethnic identity, gender and their socio-cultural
milieu, which constrains and shapes
interlocutors’ identities, interpersonal
relationships, and their knowledge and belief
system. CDA, to use Teun and Dijk’s (2010)
argument, is a type of discourse analytical
research that primarily studies the way social
power abuse, dominance, and inequality are
enacted, reproduced and resisted by the text
and talk in the social and political context (p.
352). This framework triggers multiple levels
of discussion of the relationship between
power, ideologies, and language use as it is
concerned with examining written and spoken
texts in order to uncover socio-culturally
motivated sources of power structures,
dominance and inequality, and biases and

prejudices. CDA also takes into account how
these discursive sources of power are
developed, initiated maintained, reproduced
and transformed within the parameters of
specific social, economic, political and
historical contexts. As Fairclough (1993)
remarks, CDA also strives to explore how
opaque and non-transparent discourse
relationships serve as factors involved in
securing power and hegemony which lead to
power imbalances, social inequalities,
undemocratic practice, and other injustices. In
this sense, CDA is considered a social science
research method, which views discourse and
its meaning(s) beyond the level of sentences
and involves analyzing, interpreting and
critically critiquing social life reflected in the
text. The analytical strengths of CDA should not
be confined to the realm of research alone but
be expanded to the teaching of literary
discourses in order to enable the students to
get engaged with the texts in evolving a multi-
level discussion of the discursive sources of
power, dominance, role relationships,
identities, ideologies, social practices in order
to raise students’ awareness of discourse
patterns in real life as literary texts are closer
to the examples of language in real life use.

The second theoretical model of relevance

to this paper is the framework of Identity
Construction and Performance (ICP). Against
the fixed general notion of identity as a fixed
and stable core of self, Watson (2006) claims
that identity is “an ongoing performative
process in which individuals draw on diverse
resources for the construction and
presentation of the self (p. 509)”. Gumperz and
Gumperz (1997) provide an elaborated view on
this stating that, “the issues of gender, ethnicity,
and class are customarily taken as given
parameters and boundaries within which we
create our own social identities (p.1)”.
However, the study of language as interactive
discourse demonstrates that these parameters
are not constant which could be taken for
granted but rather are communicatively
constructed. Therefore, in order to understand
the issues of identity and how those issues
affect and get affected by social, ethnic and
political factors requires a better
understanding of communicative processes by
which they arise. Socio-pragmatic modes of
analysis are most suitable for providing a

Journal of Language and Literature

Vol. 19 No. 2 – October 2019 ISSN: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online)

proper understanding of the communicative
processes.

The third theoretical model directly

relevant to the concerns of this paper is the
Face Management Theory (FMT). This
politeness model is propounded by Brown and
Levinson (1987) which is based on Goffman’s
(1972) concept of face, which is related to each
individual’s self-esteem that is manifested in
public. Every competent member of a society
emotionally invests this self-esteem due to its
vulnerable nature as the face can be either
maintained, enhanced, or lost. Therefore,
everyone constantly attends to it as a social
principle in interpersonal communications.
Thus, everyone’s face is mutually protected and
maintained in the normal course of
communication. Conversely, in cases of face
threats people have the right to defend their
faces and in doing so they can also threaten the
face of other(s) if needed. The face involves two
aspects: (a) Positive face is related to the
positive face wants of being accepted, liked,
approved of by others. (b) Negative face is
related to the negative face wants of being
given freedom from imposition, freedom of
choice, and freedom of options by others. Every
human being creates or builds a public self-
image or face in accordance with the face-
related norms approved by his/her society.
Thus, Goffman (1972) rightly argues that the
concept of ‘self’ is an interactive social
construct. Therefore, the ‘self’ can be viewed as
a social or public construct based on the notion
of the face in terms of positive social value a
person claims individually. A verbal discourse,
therefore, turns out to be a collective and
cooperative effort or a common pursuit
towards maintaining inter-personal faces.
According to Goffman (2008), face
management involves the avoidance process,
the corrective process, the aggressive use of
face work in view of the face wants and social
relationships (pp. 299-310).

Research Methodology

The main aim of this paper is to study the
operations of the face-saving and face-
threatening mechanism involved in the dialogic
discourses of characters in ASB while
constructing and performing different types of
identities during their dialogic interactions. In

doing that social aspect of characters’
occupation, authority, power, status, ethnic
identity, solidarity, distance, and situational
factors and how do they influence the
management of face while interacting with
each other are taken into account in analyzing
the dialogic discourses taken from ASB. Four
dialogic discourses with a diverse power
structure linked to the participants’ social
identities have been extracted from ASB and
subjected to socio-pragmatic examination and
critical analytical discussion and
interpretation. The analysis of each dialogic
discourse is driven by the basic tenets of ICP
and CDA using Goffman’s (1972, 2008)
framework of face management and Brown and
Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness. In view
of the analytical discussion, interpretations,
and findings, implications on the pedagogy of
literary discourses and social and inter-
personal interaction have been explored,
discussed and proposed.

What follows next is a socio-pragmatic

analysis and discussion of characters’ face
management as deployed and surfaced in ASB.

Socio-pragmatic analysis of identity
construction and face management in
the dialogic discourses from ASB

Thornborrow (2005) remarks that
identity, whether social, institutional or
individual is something that is constantly built
and negotiated all our lives during interactions
with others. Identity is multidimensional for
the reason that people switch roles at different
times and in different contexts, which may shift
into different and also sometimes conflicting
identities of the people involved. The interplay
of both individual and collective identities in
the interaction and their face management in
the following dialogue can be explored in many
ways.

Dialogic Discourse 1

Turn 1: Mrs. Rupa Mehra: Who is he?
Come here. Come here at once.
Turn 2: Lata: Just a friend.
Turn 3: Mrs. Rupa Mehra: Just a friend! A
friend! And friends are for holding hands
with? Is this what I brought you up for? …
Turn 4: Lata: Who told you? Hema’s Taiji?

Journal of Language and Literature

ISSN: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) V. Vinod Kumar, Vijay Singh Thakur & Justin James

Turn 5: Mrs. Rupa Mehra: Hema’s Taiji?
Hema’s Taiji? Is she in this too? … She lets
those girls run around all over the place
with flowers in their hair in the evening.
Who told me? The wretched girl asks me
who told me. No one told me. It’s the talk of
the town, everyone knows about it.
Everyone thought you were a good girl with
a good reputation– and now it is too late.
Too late.
Turn 6: Lata: Ma, you always say Malti is
such a nice girl. And she has friends like
that– you know that– everyone knows that.
Turn 7: Mrs. Rupa Mehra: Be quiet! Don’t
answer me back! I’ll give you two tight slaps.
Roaming around shamelessly near the
dhobi-ghat and having a gala time.
Turn 8: Lata: But Malti–
Turn 9: Mrs. Rupa Mehra: Malti! Malti! I’m
talking about you, not about Malti … Do you
want to be like her? And lying to your
mother. I’ll never let you go for a walk again.
You’ll stay in this house, do you hear? Do you
hear?
Turn 10: Lata: Yes, Ma …
Turn 11: Mrs. Rupa Mehra: What’s his
name?
Turn 12: Lata: Kabir.
Turn 13: Mrs. Rupa Mehra: Kabir what? …
He has a name, doesn’t he? What is he –
Kabir Lal, Kabir Mehra – or what? Are you
waiting for the tea to get cold? Or have you
forgotten?
Turn 14: Lata: Kabir Durrani …
Turn 15: Mrs. Rupa Mehra: Is he a Parsi?
… A Muslim … What did I do in my past life
that I have brought this upon my beloved
daughter? (ASB, pp.181–82)

Before examining the above dialogue
between the mother and her daughter, it will be
helpful to look at the context of the
conversation. Mrs. Rupa Mehra, on her visit to
a friend a day before, was reported and
cautioned by her neighbor that she should be
careful about her daughter as somebody saw
her walking in the company of a young man
holding his hand by the side of a river in the
previous evening. The dialogue under
examination is consequential to this alert.

The dominant force of conversation in the

above dialogue is Rupa Mehra’s speech act of
questioning and demanding explanation from

her daughter Lata about her personal
relationship with the boy in question in the
dialogue. Turn management in the dialogue
demonstrates how the power and dominance
work between the mother and daughter in the
Indian socio-cultural fabric. A closer look at the
turn taking and turn allocation in the dialogue
suggests that Mrs. Rupa Mehra took bigger turn
lengths of 217 words as compared to Lata who
was allowed to take only smaller turn lengths
of 37 words. Mrs. Rupa Mehra’s interrogative
approach (e.g. Who is he?, in turn, 1; What’s his
name?, in turn, 11; Is he a Parsi? in turn, 15,
etc.); her imperative tone (You’ll stay in this
house, do you hear? In turn, 9); her
interruptions (Be quiet! Don’t answer me back!,
in turn 7); and her aggressive treatment (Be
quiet!, I’ll give you two tight slaps., in turn, 7)
are socio-culturally motivated choices, which
display a discursive source of dominance and
power of mother over her daughter. In
comparison, Lata’s hesitant, submissive and
compliant responses (Just a friend, in turn, 2;
Yes Ma…, in turn, 10, Kabir and Durrani…; in
turn 14) clearly indicate that she was in a
powerless position in relation to her mother.
Being part of solidarity-oriented Indian society,
Mrs. Rupa Mehra’s strategies are the marked
features of exercising authority, power and
dominance over the addressee; her daughter.
Mrs. Rupa Mehra is asserting her social
parental identity by exercising authority to
question, influence, and map out her daughter’s
personal relationship which might lead to
marriage. Lata’s well-formed submissive and
complaint short responses suggest the relative
formation and presentation of the identity of an
obedient daughter. The communicative
intentions of the mother and the corresponding
submissive responses of the answer with
explanation suggest that Mrs. Rupa Mehra
assumes that in the capacity of the mother she
has socially-sanctioned power and authority to
question and demand explanations from her
daughter about her personal relationship with
the boy in question. On the other hand, Lata
presupposes that having an inter-caste
relationship without her mother’s knowledge is
socially at odds.

In terms of face management, Mrs. Rupa
Mehra, is threatening her daughter Lata’s
negative face in almost every turn in the
dialogue by not giving her freedom (Come here

Journal of Language and Literature

Vol. 19 No. 2 – October 2019 ISSN: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online)

at once., in turn, 1); by scolding ( Is this what I
brought you up for?, in turn 3) and by
threatening (I’ll never let you go for a walk
again….; Do you hear? in turn, 9). However, Lata
is trying her best to save the positive face of her
mother in being submissive and respectful
through her answer-clarification-explanation
and compliance-oriented responses while
answering to her mother’s questions. Lata’s
submissive and compliant efforts are aimed at
achieving social and familial coherence, which
is influenced by two factors, which are that Lata
does not want to confront her mother and she
wants to maintain her due deference for her
mother’s socio-culturally approved parental
authority to question, influence and map out
her personal relationships including marriage.

Dialogic Discourse 2

Turn 1: Mrs. Rupa Mehra: No, (said Mrs.
Rupa Mehra vehemently, shaking her needle
for emphasis). My daughter is not going to
act in any play. No. (She glared at Lata over
the top of her reading glasses.) … Boys and
girls together – acting! …
Turn 2: Lata: Like in Julius Caesar last year
(ventured Lata).
Turn 3: Mrs. Rupa Mehra: You be quiet
(snapped her mother). No one has asked you
to speak. Have you ever heard of Savita
wanting to act? To act on the stage with
hundreds of people staring? And going to
those nightly gatherings with boys – (ASB,
pp.777-78)

Rejecting a request is considered a threat

to the addressee’s positive face as it violates the
addressee’s face want of expected approval. In
this dialogue, Lata’s request is bluntly rejected
by her mother Mrs. Rupa Mehra (in turn 1) for
performing in the annual day of her college
without any mitigating effort to cover or repair
the involved face threat and face loss for the
addressee. However, Lata’s submissive and
indirect approach of persuasion (in turn 2)
does not reflect any hurt feeling of losing face
her mother threatened her negative face to
control and deny her individual autonomy and
freedom to participate in the play. On the
contrary, Lata is attempting to protect and
maintain her mother’s positive face by avoiding
confrontation and argument when her

mother’s view and opinion are at variance with
her individual ambition and belief.

In this dialogic discourse, Mrs. Rupa Mehra

and Lata hold most salient cultural identities at
a higher level of generalization and abstraction.
Mrs. Rupa Mehra represents the identity of a
conservative mother of the early twentieth
century and Lata a modern daughter of the mid-
twentieth century as per the timeline in the
story in ASB. According to the established
socio-cultural norms of that era, Mrs. Rupa
Mehra firmly believed that Lata as a young girl
of marriageable age must not be allowed to mix
with a young boy to avoid her developing a
negative reputation which will adversely affect
her matrimonial prospects in future. Influenced
by such social belief, she rejects Lata’s idea of
acting in a college play. Lata’s indirect and
polite attempt to persuade her mother to allow
her to act in the play suggests that Lata testifies
her mother’s concerns for Lata’s social
reputation and it also indicates Lata’s approval
of her mother’s socially-approved parental
authority to question and to influence her
children’s personal decisions. Mrs. Rupa
Mehra’s solidarity, power, and confidence are
clearly evident in her direct encroachment on
the daughter’s conversational space through
her act of interrupting and snapping. On the
other hand, Lata’s attempt of mild persuasion
aimed at her mother indicates her desire to act
in the play to be understood and approved of.
This scene in the novel suggests a generation
gap and also a shift in the social attitude of
modern educated Indian youth to construct
their identities by asserting and exercising
their personal decisions. This direction
towards social change entails a change in Lata’s
perspective and ideology as compared to her
mother’s ideology of controlling young
children’s personal decisions and actions.

According to traditional Indian socio-

cultural milieu, it was a common belief that
showing bold and free attitude to life and
mingling of young girls with boys in public
needed to be strictly discouraged in order to
maintain a decent character and clean
reputation. In other words, Indian culture does
not encourage the concept of personal
autonomy and collective solidarity is regarded
as more important than individual identity and
freedom. However, the opposite of this also

Journal of Language and Literature

ISSN: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) V. Vinod Kumar, Vijay Singh Thakur & Justin James

stands valid for a western culture where the
same conversation in countries like America or
Britain is most likely to be taken as an
extremely face-threatening act against the
daughter, which is likely to result in a
retaliatory response from the addressee. Such
situations in sociolinguistic literature are
considered as an example of, what Blum-Kulka
and Olshtain (1984, p.196) argue, cross-
cultural functional variation.

Dialogic Discourse 3

Turn 1: Rasheed’s father: Anyway … why
don’t you have a cup of tea now that you’ve
made such an effort to come. I’ll summon
Rasheed’s friend, and we will talk…
Turn 2: Tiwariji: No, no– no tea, no tea.
Turn 3: Rasheed’s father: But we will all
be having it together, Tiwariji, it is not
poisoned. Even Kapoor Sahib will join us.
Turn 4: Tiwariji: He drinks tea with all of
you?
Turn 5: Rasheed’s father: Indeed. He eats
with us too.
Turn 6:Tiwariji: … But I have just had tea,
you know, with my breakfast– I’ve just had
tea and also far too much to eat before I left
my house. Look at me. I must be careful.
Your hospitality knows no bounds. But–
Turn 7: Rasheed’s father: You aren’t
saying, by any chance, Tiwariji, are you, that
what we are offering falls below your
expectations? Why don’t you like to eat with
us? Do you think we will pollute you?
Turn 8: Tiwariji: Oh, no, no, no, it is just
that an insect of the gutter like myself does
not feel happy when offered the luxuries of a
palace. Heh heh heh! … (ASB, p. 659)

In this dialogue both the participants,

Rasheed’s father and Tiwariji, are performing
face-threatening acts. Tiwariji has rejected
Rasheed’s father’s social offer of tea and
threatened the positive face of the host (turn 2).
On the other hand, Rasheed’s father’s criticised
Tiwariji’s rejection of his offer which surfaces
as an attack on the negative face of the
addressee in not respecting the freedom of his
choice (turn 3). The intended meaning in most
of the conversation in this dialogue is rooted in
the ethnic identities of the Tiwariji and
Rasheed’s father. Rasheed’s Father is a Muslim
and Tiwariji is an upper caste Brahmin but both

are good friends. However, at the social level,
the caste rules of Tiwariji do not permit him to
accept to eat or drink anything offered by non-
Brahmins. Tiwariji should have directly and
bluntly refused to drink tea due to caste rules
without any mitigating attempts to the threat to
the positive face of Rasheed’s father. However,
as Rasheed’s father held the status of Tiwariji’s
friend and also his power of being a wealthy
landlord, Tiwariji had to mitigate his rejection
of his offer of tea by giving an elaborate
explanation (turn 6). Further, the use of
addressee-elevating and self-lowering
language by Tiwariji is aimed at minimizing the
distance that has developed between them by
not accepting the offer of the tea on the basis of
socially determined caste rules (turn 8). Here,
the guest is trying to mitigate the face-
threatening situation by reducing his own
image by using self-humiliating language and
then glorifying the hospitality due to the
solidarity of friendship and the social status of
the host as a wealthy landlord.

In view of the mitigating response of the

addressee Tiwariji, there is a need for an
explanation with reference to social norms and
the mutual authority of the conversational
participants in the social context of India in the
1950s, which is the timeframe of the story in
ASB. The discoursal situation in this
conversational exchange seems to be of an
aymmetrical status. To elaborate, being a
Brahmin, i.e. Tiwariji holds more social power
over his non-Brahmin friend i.e. Rasheed’s
father. In such a social context of the relative
power structure, the ameliorating explanation
of Tiwariji given to his non-Brahmin Muslim
addressee indicates the shifting trend in the
newly independent India. The caste rules seem
to be going into the melting pot and the mutual
accomodation of the social status of the
addressee as a friend and a wealthy landlord
moving towards neutralization of rigid caste
rules.

Dialogic Discourse 4

Turn 1. Ustad Majeed Khan: Malti (said
Ustad Majeed Khan), carry the tanpura with
respect, with both hands. It isn’t the
offspring of a cat. What is the matter with
you?

Journal of Language and Literature

Vol. 19 No. 2 – October 2019 ISSN: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online)

Turn 2. Malti: (silence; no answer.)
(ASB, 1265)

This dialogic discourse is marked by the

traditional relationship of a Guru (the
traditional reverent concept of a teacher in the
Indian socio-cultural context) and his disciple
(overpolite and respectful student Malti).
Ustad Majeed Khan’s bitter reprimand (turn 1)
uttered for Malti threatens her positive face
wants of understanding and approving the
addresee’s individual liking and desire. Malti’s
music teacher’s face-threatening act of bitter
criticism is performed without any
amelioration. The music teacher scolded the
addressee for carrying the musical instrument
by not using both the hands and thereby failing
to treat the musical instrument with respect.
Malti maintained polite silence to express her
apology and also her unconditional respect for
her music Guru. The Guru’s angry reaction is
influenced by the Indian cultural tradition to
treat music as a devotional art and musical
instruments as sacred. Malti’s act of holding the
musical instrument in a casual manner, as an
offspring of a cat, was considered by Ustad
Majeed Khan as an act of disrespect. Ustad
Majeed Khan’s face-threatening act of
reprimanding was performed without any
circumlocution of mitigation which is likely to
sound absurd or eccentric to the readers not
familiar with the socio-cultural norm of
showing respect to the musical instruments in
India. Misunderstanding of such speech acts by
readers from the different socio-cultural
background(s) may result in what Flowerdew
(1988, p.77) refers to as a ‘socio-pragmatic
failure’.

Concluding Remarks and Emerging
Implications

In the backdrop of a premise that literature is

representative of human societies and human life,

this paper has attempted to analyze fictional

dialogic discourses from ASB in the framework of

Critical Discourse Analysis, Identity Construction

and Performance Framework, and The

sociolinguistic Face Management Theory. The

analytical discussion of four dialogic excerpts

from ASB has been initiated and evolved on the

basis of the parameters of socially-driven Power

Principle and Solidarity Principle. Identity

Construction and Face Management have been

examined in the varied socio-cultural contexts of

(a) mother and daughter’s argument on the issue

of freedom for young girls to develop friendship

and intimacy with a boy of her choice; (b) mother

and daughter’s talk about the issue of the degree of

social freedom for girls to avail; (c) a satirical

conversation in an unequal host-guest situation

constrained by caste rules, and (d) a Guru-disciple

exchange of showing proper respect to the musical

instrument. It becomes obvious in these situations

that the conversational participants create or

construct and perform their mutual identities based

on the socio-cultural norms of Face Management.

The explanation of face-threatening devices and

strategies employed by the interlocutors in the

dialogic discourses selected from ASB focusses on

their structure and functions and also on the

individual as well as collective social factors that

influenced their use in specific ways. Based on the

analytical discussion, it can be claimed that the

character utterances in the ASB prove to be

sensitive to the social and cultural contexts in

which they are used in accordance with the

subjective experiences and value system of the

conversational participants. It will not be an

exaggeration to claim that the whole gamut of

inter-personal communicative discourse is mostly

influenced by socio-pragmatic factors and

considerations. Thus, based on the main tenets of

CDA proposed by Fairclough and Wodak (1997,

pp. 271-280), it can be concluded that discourse

constitutes society and culture; power relations are

discursive; the link between text and society is

mediated; discourse analysis is interpretative and

explanatory; and discourse is a form of social

action.

In view of the above analytical findings, it
can be strongly argued that the real significance
and meanings in the Indian English Fiction or
Fictional works from other socio-cultural
contexts cannot be studied, discussed and
appreciated without an in-depth knowledge
and understanding of the real social and
cultural issues that are involved and integrated
into these discourses. This leads to a
pedagogical recommendation of developing the
context-bound textual, linguistic, and cultural
competence in students who study literature in
order to prepare them to understand, study and
evaluate the patterns of discourse in their right
perspectives. Using House and Kasper’s (1981,
p.184) argument that pragmatic aspects of
communication, such as politeness markers,
are inseparable parts of the foreign cultural

Journal of Language and Literature

ISSN: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) V. Vinod Kumar, Vijay Singh Thakur & Justin James

system and therefore they should not be
borrowed and used as it is and be interpreted
by reference to one’s native socio-cultural
framework. Put another way, an attempt
should be made to minimize interference of the
native culture in order to prevent ineffective,
inappropriate and possibly impolite
interpretations of character utterances in the
novel or drama. Socio-pragmatic
interpretations of literary discourses will not
only sensitize but also raise the students’
awareness of discourse patterns of real-life
communication. Furthermore, it may also
provide a valid testing ground for the discourse
models themselves and also the students will
derive a stimulating learning experience
through such analytical attempts.

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge that this paper
drew heavily on the materials and facilities
available at the English Language Center, Nizwa
College of Technology. I offer my sincere thanks
to Mr. Sultan Al-Dighaishi, HoD, ELC, NCT for
his constant encouragement and support. This
note of thanksgiving would be insincere if I fail
to appreciate the great help that I received from
Mrs. Lalitha Justin, Lecturer, ELC, NCT.

References

Brown, P. & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness:
Some universals in language usage.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Blum-Kulka, S. & Olshtain, (1984). Requests

and apologies: A cross-cultural study of
speech act realization patterns
(CCSSARP). Applied Linguistics, 5, (3), 196-
213.

Fairclough, N. (1993). Language and power.

New York: Longman.

Fairclough, N. & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical

discourse analysis. In T. van Dijk (Ed.),
Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary
introduction, 2, (pp. 258-284). London:
Sage.

Flowerdew, J. (1988). Speech acts and
language teaching. Language Teaching, 21
(2), 69-82.

Goffman, E. (1972). On face work: An analysis

of ritual elements in social interaction. In
J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics,
3, Speech Acts (pp. 319-346), New York:
Academic Press.

Goffman, E. (2008). On face-work: An analysis

of ritual elements in social interaction. In
Adam Jawoski & Nikolas Coupland (Eds.)
The Discourse Reader, 2nd Edn., (pp. 299-
310). Oxon: Routledge.

Gumperz, J. J. & Gumperz, J. C. (1997).

Introduction: Language and the
communication of social identity. In J. J.
Gumperz (Ed.), Language and Social
Identity (pp. 1-21). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press

House, J. & Kasper, G. (1981). Politeness

markers in English and German. In F.
Coulmus (Ed.), Conversational Routine, 2
(pp.157 – 185). The Hague, The
Netherlands: Mouton Publishers.

Seth, V. (1993, rep. 2001) A Suitable Boy. New

Delhi: Penguin Books.

Teun, A. & Dijk, V. (2010). Critical discourse

analysis. In Deborah Shiffrin, Deborah
Tannen & Heidi E. Hamilton (Eds.), The
Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 352-
371). New Jersey: Blackwell Publishing
Ltd.

Thornborrow, J. (2005). Language and

identity. In I. Singh and J.S. Peccei (eds.),
Language, Society, and Power: An
Introduction (pp.158-172). London:
Routledge.

Watson, C. (2006). Narratives of practice and

the construction of identity in teaching.
Teachers and Teaching: Theory and
Practice, 12 (5), 509-526.

Wodak, R. (2000). Does sociolinguistics need

social theory? Social perspectives on
critical discourse analysis. Discourse and
Society, 2 (3), 123-147.