Politeness strategies in job application in nepal

Abstract

Pragmatics is one of the areas of study that deals with how meaning is shaped from the context. Pragmatics has roots in philosophy of language and politeness principle is a part of pragmatic study. This study ‘Politeness Strategies in Job Applications in Nepal’ attempted to examine the trend of using the politeness in job application in the out-set of Jhapa district. It explores the politeness strategies that the students majoring English at Kankai Multiple Campus Jhapa use in their job application letters using document analysis method. This study has traced the areas of the positive and negative faces of the addresser and the addresses using Brown and Levinson’s pragmatic principle, especially the politeness strategies. To investigate the politeness strategies of job application letters Brown and Levinson’s theory is applied in this thesis, as it is the most influential and comprehensive model of politeness. Special attention has been given to choice between positive and negative strategies. Although they are used to attend to positive or negative face respectively, one speech act can threaten both faces at the same time and thus the speaker must choose to which face he should primarily attend. This study has five chapters. The first chapter deals with the general background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives of the research, rationale of the study, significance of the study, delimitations of the study. Chapter two includes review of theoretical and empirical literature, its implications and theoretical framework. Chapter three makes clear all the areas of methodology dealing with the sources of the data and the population of the study, sampling procedure, research tools, data collection and interpretation. Chapter four contains the results and discussion with the analysis and the interpretation of the collected data using different charts, diagrams, figures and tables. Likewise, the last chapter consists the conclusion and implication of the study and also some recommendations for the purpose of improving the concerned field. References and appendices are presented at the end of this study.