POLITENESS AND FACEWORK IN A POLITICAL INTERVIEW: SEUN OKINBALOYE AND SENATOR DINO MELAYE ON CHANNELS TV
Keywords:
politeness, facework, political interviews, Channels TV, Seun Okinbaloye, Nigerian media, discourse analysis, Brown and Levinson, face threatening actsAbstract
This study examines how politeness and facework are managed in one television interview, in which Seun Okinbaloye interviewed Senator Dino Melaye on the programme Politics Today (Channels Television, 1 August 2025). Using Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory and a qualitative content analysis of the full transcript, the study coded 73 politeness acts: 37 positive politeness (50.7%), 19 negative politeness (26.0%) and 17 bald on record face threatening acts (FTAs) (23.3%). Nine of Brown and Levinson’s fifteen positive politeness strategies occurred. Joking was the most frequent (12 instances), followed by goodwill expressions (6), exaggeration (5) and in group identity markers (5), the last used only by the guest, mainly through the kinship address my brother. Negative politeness was realised mostly through thanking and deference. The host produced more unmitigated FTAs than the guest (12 against 5), but both speakers used humour to soften challenges. Positive politeness was more frequent than negative politeness (exact binomial test, p = .022). The findings describe this single interview and are not generalised to other programmes.References
Agbaglo. (2017). The use of politeness strategies in the analysis and discussion sections of English research articles. [Journal, volume and page details to be confirmed against the source.]
Akpanglo-Nartey. (2017). Politeness in requests among Ga learners of English. [Author initials and publication details to be confirmed.]
Bargiela-Chiappini, F. (2003). Face and politeness: New insights for old concepts. Journal of Pragmatics, 35, 1453–1469.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.
Channels Television. (2025). 2027 elections is Nigeria versus APC [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/wNMr8JBCtiU
Cutrone. (2011). Politeness, face and backchannels of Japanese speakers. [Publication details to be confirmed against the source.]
Cutting, J. (2002). Pragmatics and discourse: A resource book for students. Routledge.
Dufon, M., Kasper, G., Takahashi, S., & Yoshinaga, N. (1994). Bibliography on linguistic politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 21, 527–578.
Edu-Buandoh. (2011). Syntactic structures as politeness markers in Ghanaian English. [Author initials and publication details to be confirmed.]
Eelen, G. (2001). A critique of politeness theories. St. Jerome Publishing.
Fitria, et al. (2020). [Title and publication details to be confirmed against the source.]
Fraser, B. (1990). Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 219–236.
Fukushima, S. (2002). Requests and culture: Politeness in British English and Japanese. Peter Lang.
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face to face behavior. Doubleday Anchor.
Golato, A. (2002). German compliment responses. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(5), 547–571.
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Vol. 3. Speech acts (pp. 41–58). Academic Press.
Gu, Y. (1990). Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 237–257.
Hakim, & Novitasari. (2022). [Author initials, title and publication details to be confirmed against the source.]
Hamed. (2014). Politeness and impoliteness in British and Arab sports media [Master’s thesis]. [Author initials and institution to be confirmed.]
Ho, D. Y. (1994). Face dynamics: From conceptualization to measurement. In S. Ting Toomey (Ed.), The challenge of facework: Cross cultural and interpersonal issues (pp. 3–13). State University of New York Press.
Hu, H. C. (1944). The Chinese concepts of “face”. American Anthropologist, 46, 45–64.
Ide, S. (1989). Formal forms and discernment: Two neglected aspects of linguistic politeness. Multilingua, 8, 223–248.
Kasper, G. (1990). Linguistic politeness: Current research issues. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 193–218.
Kedves. (2013). [Title and publication details to be confirmed against the source.]
Kuang, & Maya. (2013). Politeness of front counter staff of Malaysian private hospitals. [Author name form and publication details to be confirmed.]
Lakoff, R. (1973). The logic of politeness: Or, minding your p’s and q’s. In Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 292–305). Chicago Linguistic Society.
Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. Longman.
Lim, T. S. (1994). Facework and interpersonal relationships. In S. Ting Toomey (Ed.), The challenge of facework: Cross cultural and interpersonal issues (pp. 209–229). State University of New York Press.
Mao, L. R. (1994). Beyond politeness theory: “Face” revisited and renewed. Journal of Pragmatics, 21, 451–486.
Matsumoto, Y. (1988). Reexamination of the universality of face: Politeness phenomena in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics, 12, 403–426.
Nwoye, O. G. (1992). Linguistic politeness and socio cultural variations of the notion of face. Journal of Pragmatics, 18, 309–328.
Ofusuaa, & Bosiwah. (2015). Polite requests among the Akyem of Ghana. [Author initials and publication details to be confirmed.]
Pinto. (2015). (Im)politeness strategies in televised debates in the 2014 Brazilian presidential election. [Author initials and publication details to be confirmed.]
Sapitri, et al. (2019). [Title and publication details to be confirmed against the source.]
Sarfo-Adu, K., & Osei, C. E. (2021). Politeness in media talk shows: The case of media panel discussions in Ghana. Journal of Media and Communication Studies, 13(3), 81–90. https://doi.org/10.5897/JMCS2020.0701
Seyyed, et al. (2016). [Title and publication details to be confirmed against the source.]
Stodulkova. (2013). Gender and politeness in discourse [Bachelor’s thesis]. [Author initials and institution to be confirmed.]
Vilkki, L. (2006). Politeness, face and facework: Current issues. In A man of measure: Festschrift in honour of Fred Karlsson on his 60th birthday (SKY Journal of Linguistics, Special Supplement, Vol. 19, pp. 322–332). The Linguistic Association of Finland.
Wagner. (2004). Apologizing in Cuernavaca, Mexico. [Author initials and publication details to be confirmed.]
Watts, R. J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge University Press.
Werkhofer, K. T. (1992). Traditional and modern views: The social constitution and the power of politeness. In R. J. Watts, S. Ide, & K. Ehlich (Eds.), Politeness in language: Studies in its history, theory and practice (pp. 155–199). Mouton de Gruyter.
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Highlighted entries are incomplete and must be checked against the original sources before submission.
