Pragmatic Competence and Politeness Strategies in Classroom Discourse

Abstract

However, pragmatics competence, i.e. appropriate usage of language in a particular social context, in relation to some goal and in terms of the social relationship of interlocutors, is the key element of classroom communication that is frequently neglected in language teaching due to preoccupation with grammatical accuracy. The current paper analyzes the implementation of pragmatic competence in terms of the usage of politeness strategies in classroom interaction through politeness theory, the notion of face, and the Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) model. It is claimed that classroom talk creates a specific discourse situation in which institutional hierarchies between the teacher and learner influence the usage of different types of politeness strategies: the teacher mostly uses positive politeness as well as bald-on-record directives, whereas the learner frequently resorts to negative politeness and off-record politeness in order to avoid the threat to face while interacting with a superior interlocutor. Empirical studies on the usage of politeness strategies in EFL and ESL classroom discourse are analyzed, their results are generalized in a comparative typology of politeness strategies in the classroom with examples, and some implications for teacher education and explicit pragmatic competence instruction are discussed.