On the Issue of Polite Appeals and Blessings in Indian English

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study is to investigate politeness as the culture-specific phenomenon, the actual manifestations of it in the Indian version of English. The study distinguishes some politeness fixed formulae in Indian English on the basis of the Speech Acts theory. It focuses on such culturally determined politeness patterns in Indian English as appeals and blessings, their functions and language features as compared with the ones in the standard version of British English. The use of polite appeals and blessings in Indian English is greatly influenced by age and gender restrictions and a traditional family structure with a Patrilineal background which has been followed since long ago. The choice of appeals and blessings in social interactions mainly depends on their basic strategies as speech acts. The study shows the points where two different lingua-cultures never meet.