Cross Cultural Politeness Strategies in Asynchronous Academic Discussion Boards for International Graduate Students

Abstract

In the changing environment of the online learning spaces and increasingly multicultural classrooms, academic communication has been transformed, in particular, with asynchronous discussion boards. Various polite strategies may be used in such situations by students of various cultural backgrounds, therefore influencing the level of clarity of the exchanged information, tone, and effectiveness. The problem to be addressed in this paper is that of cross-cultural difference in politeness strategy of asynchronous scholarly conversations. The aim is to explore how politeness plays out in international graduate students' bargaining for interpersonal relationships and establishing meaning in online academic discourse. The study has a qualitative discourse analysis approach that deals with corpus-based elements and examines approximately 150 discussion board postings of international graduate students. The results indicate that there are unique differences in the application of politeness strategies, such as differences in directness and indirectness and the common application of hedging, mitigation, and face-saving strategies. The students of the diverse cultures will express their agreement, disagreement, and even their position in different ways. The findings in the research are that politeness strategies play an important role in making sure that effective intercultural communication is achieved in the asynchronous context. The implications of the results include the academic writing pedagogy and the development of intercultural communicative competence when learning online.