Politeness maxims in Saad Al-Hariri’s and François Hollande’s speeches on refugees

Abstract

We consider the politeness maxims implied in the discussion on refugees between Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri and French President Francois Hollande. Based on the approach of the six-maxims of politeness by G. Leach (1983), the study is aimed at recognizing these maxims, describing their forms and revealing the intended goals. Mutual understanding is considered as a key element of the pragmatic analysis of the selected two speeches. A thorough study of words, phrases and sentences was carried out in order to sort and highlight all forms of mutual understanding. We make a brief comparison of the two speeches in terms of mutual understanding and politeness. Firstly, the study presents the preliminary stages of studying the definition of key terms, examines politeness in detail, builds on Leach's theory of politeness, and reviews several related studies. Secondly, a sample of two speeches is selected, analyzed and examined for politeness. It is concluded that the two speeches studied are very sympathetic towards refugees and that the corresponding references contain several forms of courtesy rules. We note the difference between the Arab and European discourse about refugees and their suffering.