A Comparative Study of the Implementation of Politeness Strategies amongIranian EFL learners studying MA in Literature, Translation, and Teaching

Abstract

The notion of politeness is formed by different cultural perceptions. In different situations and contexts, politeness may be interpreted and evaluated differently by various cultures. This study aims at investigating how politeness strategies are utilized in three different fields of English at MA level in Iran including Teaching, Translation, and Literature in order to find out whether the field of study can have an influence on using politeness strategies on the part of learners or not . The theoretical framework employed in the study was that of Brown and Levinson (1978), which has been tested cross-linguistically and proved to be the most useful model in analyzing the pragmatics of politeness in conversation. To achieve these objectives, the related data were collected based on a questionnaire including 12 different role-playing situations (Brown and Levinson, 1978). The qualitative and quantitative analysis revealed that in all of the three groups selected for the purpose of this study, the Risk of the imposition is the most effective factor in eliciting politeness followed by the Power of the addressee over the speaker; the 'Social Distance' came out as the least effective factor. Teaching group used politeness strategies more than the two other groups and the Translation group used politeness strategies less than the two other groups. The findings of the study can be important for EFL teachers because they should also pay attention to teaching cultural aspects as part of the curriculum when teaching a foreign language.