Journal |
Bhasha
Journal issue | 4 | 1 | 2025
Research Article | Revisiting Passivity and Politeness in Selected Indic Languages
Revisiting Passivity and Politeness in Selected Indic Languages
Abstract
This paper examines politeness and its realisation through passive constructions in Hindi, drawing on established theoretical frameworks. Using fresh survey data from near‑native Hindi speakers whose first languages are Eastern Indic languages (EILs), it explores how passive constructions may get differently ranked in the politeness hierarchies. This differential ranking of the passives has been argued to be correlated to the first languages (the EILs) – a reason for the regional variation in politeness judgements, suggesting that speakers of EILs – familiar with explicit honorific markings – often perceive modal forms as more polite than passives. It also discusses the grammaticalisation of the motion verb jānā (‘to go’) in passive modal constructions, proposing that indirectness via passivisation can signpost politeness, though this perception varies across language backgrounds.
Submitted: Feb. 6, 2025 | Accepted: May 12, 2025 | Published July 1, 2025 | Language: en
Keywords Passive structures • Politeness hierarchy • Grammaticalisation • Modal construction • Realisation of politeness strategy
Copyright © 2025 Satyam Kumar, Chinmay Dharurkar. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/bhasha/2785-5953/2025/01/001