The Pragmatics of Civility in Selected Speeches by the British Royal Family Members

Abstract

Civility is one of the characteristic values of public life; it is the key of morality, ethics, and goodness that members of every society must abide by to lead an ideal life. This research is aimed to elaborate on the concept of civility in selected speeches by the members of the British royal family. The research has confined itself to three main objectives. These are: (1) elaborating the concept of civility with a special focus on its types, (2) identifying the pragmatic strategies that are used to realize civility in the selected speeches, and (3) naming the most common types of civility and pragmatic strategies  that are resorted to by the royal family members. By using a model based on detecting the types of civility and some pragmatic theories, the researchers analyse the data using a qualitative-quantitative research method. The analysis starts with a comprehensive reading of the speeches and, then, identifying the types of civility and the pragmatic strategies. The results of analysis are put in a numerical form and are discussed both qualitatively and quantitatively.

The research findings show that civility is one of the basic concepts in the speeches of the royal family members due to the nature of this concept which aims at persuading people to follow the righteous course of action and belief. The study reveals that deep civility is the most commonly used  type of civility while surface civility is the least. Finally, it is found that all the pragmatic strategies included in the model are utilized in the speeches under study.