Politeness Strategies in Arabic Culture with Reference to Eulogy

Abstract

The present paper discusses an important subject in pragmatics: politeness strategies with reference to Arabic. At the beginning, it sheds the light upon some basic cultural facts which are necessary for everyday social interaction. Arab people have a set of verbal and non-verbal actions which should be respected by native citizens and foreigners as well. If a person violates these norms, this will lead to unsuccessful communication. These involve polite behavior towards adults, women, neighbours and strangers. The second part of the paper concentrates on one literary genre in Arabic i.e. 'praise'. Arab Poets pay great attention to praise because of the reward they get from kings and leaders. The study focuses on the impact of praise to maintain politeness in social communication. It concludes that Arab poets use images from their culture such as courage, generosity and nature to describe their kings. They resort to positive politeness through making reference to the superiority and high prestige of kings