POLITENESS IN SINGAPOREAN ENGLISH : THE CASE OF REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION

Abstract

This Academic Exercise aims at discovering the politeness phenomenon in Singaporean English. This is done through studying the forms of request for information which have been collected from spontaneous speech. Respondents from America, Singapore and the United Kingdom are asked to rank whether each request form is 'Least Polite', 'Polite' or 'Most Polite'. The results are then analysed alongside the contexts in which the requests are made in order to see the correlation between the linguistic and pragmatic aspects of politeness. It is found that the degree of politeness increases with an increase in social distance and relative power between the speaker and hearer. In formal contexts, strategies of negative politeness are employed whereas in informal ones, the requests are made without redressive action. Furthermore, the presence of request forms which are typical of Singaporean English indicates that linguistic forms of politeness are not universal. In addition, the ratings from the various cultural groups verify the fact that different cultures view forms of politeness differently. The politeness phenomenon in Singaporean English is a reflection of the multilingual configuration of the Singaporean society.