Paper Title
An Exploration of Linguistic Politeness Strategies in A Yoruba Short Story Taught to Secondary School Learners

Abstract
This study presents an exploration of cultural and linguistic elements in some selected Yoruba greetings that are crucial to the notion of politeness in a short story taught to secondary school learners. Data were collected using existing literature; Critical Discourse Analysis is used as the research method. The study investigates the politeness routines of Yoruba greetings that are crucial to the notion of politeness and argue that greetings are important in all human conversational encounter as they are used to establish and maintain rapport among interlocutors. Among the functions of greetings exemplified in this study are discourse initiation and termination, gap filling, solidarity, security and acceptance, courtesy and respect, and comradeship. This study also focuses on describing the social distance of the interlocutors, the relative power of the hearer over the speaker and the statutory relationship of the interlocutors as the determinants of the type of politeness strategies routine of greeting to be used during conversation through the use of some particular relationship building approaches employed by the speech participants. This study could be useful in understanding the behavioural traits and values of the speakers of Yoruba languages and other languages across the world. Keywords - Linguistic Politeness strategies; greetings; culture, speakers; interlocutors; Yoruba; face (positive and negative)