Redressive Action in Political Discourse in the Face of Conflicting Views: A Case of the Building Bridges Initiative in Kenya

Abstract

Decency in language use forestalls breakdown of communication. In the face of conflicting views, it is inevitable to trespass on an opponent’s interests, equanimity or personal preserve but speakers are expected to redress that by use of politeness strategies. This study analyses the use of redressive action in political discourse in the face of conflicting views. The researcher adopts politeness theory by Brown and Levinson (1987) to analyse, interpret and discuss the data collected from pre-recorded television telecasts of three public functions on Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) in Kenya, a constitutional amendment initiative that drew sharp conflicting opinions. This study adopts an analytical research design of the discourse of eight purposively sampled politicians to elicit politeness strategies they use to redress the face threats posed by their utterances on their target hearers. Descriptive qualitative research technique is used in the analysis of data. The study finds that the political class in Kenya employ all the four politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) to redress face threats