Verbal Politeness in Chinua Achebe’s <i>Things Fall Apart</i>

Abstract

This article focuses on verbal politeness in Things Fall Apart. The paper adds to the available literature on Things Fall Apart, a pragmatic view. The study realizes that most of the utterances encode positive politeness which consolidates solidarity and communal living leading to cohesion in the society. There are instances of impositions which indicate that power and politeness are incompatible.