Maximized and Minimized Off-Record Politeness Strategies in Hacani’s Short Stories

Abstract

The current paper tried to answer the question: How are Hacani’s short stories texts maximized and minimized to save face? It is imperative to study the maximized (i.e. hyperbole) and minimized (i.e. understatement) off-record strategies among Northern Kurmanji EFL university students. Therefore, the current study tackled the use and availability of these strategies as manifested in written discourse. The researcher followed the methodological procedures of Content Analysis (CA) by Berelson and Krippendorff, as well as Brown and Levinson’s Model of Politeness. Tackling maximized (hyperbole) and minimized (understatement) off-record politeness strategies, the results manifested that from the total of 41 instances, 70.7% of samples have been hyperbolically maximized while only 29.3% of the discourse have been minimized. It was reflected that many social affairs presented in Hacani’s short stories have been treated by revealing and inspiring new ideas. Hence, concentrating on specific ideas, hyperbole, as an off-record strategy, simply saved the face of readers. In contrast, understatement was less commonly used in order to reduce the degree of severity of certain situations, leaving room for a more favorable interpretation of distasteful topics. It was helpful to consult Excel and SPSS software to test statistical differences between hyperbole and understatement. Finally, it is recommended that other off-record strategies are used to analyze literary texts between Kurdish dialects or between Kurdish and English languages.