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(IM)Politeness in Speech Act Production: Native Speaker's and EFL Learners' Perceptions and Criteria

Razzaghi, Masoumeh | 2013

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 44539 (31)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Languages and Linguistics Center
  6. Advisor(s): Tajeddin, Ziaeddin; Alemi, Minoo
  7. Abstract:
  8. Scholars in the field of pragmatics consistently argue about the inadequacy of research on the concept of impoliteness. Compared to politeness, which was the focus of most investigations, the phenomenon of impoliteness has been greatly neglected. It is a truism that learning a language involves both politeness and impoliteness concepts of that language. Regarding this fact, researchers must pay greater attention to alleviate the imbalance between politeness and impoliteness studies. The current study is an attempt to investigate the criteria of (im)politeness as they were specified by two groups of English native speakers and Iranian EFL learners. Seventy-five native English speakers and 177 EFL learners (101 females and 76 males) participated in this study. The EFL learners were at intermediate and advanced levels. They were administered a 16-item discourse completion task (DCT) for the speech act of request and apology accompanied by responses violating politeness by various degrees. The participants were asked to assess the degree of impoliteness embedded in each response on a 5-point Likert scale. They were also asked to write down the criteria while judging a situation as being polite or impolite. A content analysis of the respondents’ comments revealed similarities in (im)politeness criteria. However, the analysis of the frequency counts displayed significant differences in the degree of preference between the two groups. The findings also showed insignificant differences in the rating of the (im)politeness of the request and apology between natives and EFL learners. Besides, the t-test results indicated no significant effect of either gender or language proficiency on perception of impoliteness in request utterances. However, a two-way ANOVA showed that an interaction between gender and proficiency levels significantly affected the perception of impoliteness. Although gender-based results of this study are not compatible with a number of previous research findings (Holmes, 1995; Thonus, 1996; Zimin, 1981), proficiency results are in line with studies showing that proficiency development does not correspond to pragmatic awareness/competence (Takahashi, 2005; Zimin, 1981). The present study has two main implications. First, it suggests that (im)politeness criteria are mostly universal across cultures but the degree of (im)politeness each criterion determines is different cross-culturally. Second, gender differences and linguistic proficiency cannot be considered as strong factors that determine the degree of the (im)politeness of an utterance
  9. Keywords:
  10. Speech Acts ; Impoliteness ; Politeness

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