Politeness Strategies: Open Letter to President Uhuru Kenyatta Prior to Sagana 3 Mt Kenya Consultative Meeting

Abstract

Succinctly speaking, politics is an intricate affair that culminates in the likelihood of ugly scenarios popping out following the language that politicians employ. In line with the aforesaid, politicians attempt to employ assorted politeness strategies to exhibit decorum of some sort while addressing their seniors, more so when the addressee is at the apex of the purported leadership. The study intends to unravel the nature of politeness strategies that a section of Members of Parliament from Mount Kenya region relied on while reaching out to the president of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta. To this end, the data was collected from an open letter to President Uhuru Kenyatta whose term of leadership was scheduled to end in 2022. The analysis on the data took into account the frequency of use on the said strategies namely, bald on record, off record, positive politeness and negative politeness; hence, anchoring the study on Politeness. The study sought to analyze the strategies used by the authors of the open letter and find out how the said authors navigated between the said strategies in line with FTAs bearing in mind that there was an asymmetric power relation and social distance between them. Results of qualitative and quantitative data analysis showed a significant difference in the manner authors of the said open letter navigated between the said strategies; thus, teasing out an implication in politeness research.