Politeness
and Second Language Acquisition
S. Tanaka & S. Kawabe |
The
two studies reported here investigated the notion of politeness as
perceived by native speakers of English and advanced learners of
English. 'The questions which concerned us included: (1) Are native
speakers of English really aware of the varying degrees of politeness
conveyed by a given English sentence?; (2) Is there a high correlation
between native speakers of English and advanced learners of English
in their politeness judgements?; (3) Do native speakers of English
really use different politeness strategies in different situations?;
(4) Is there a high correlation between native and nonnative speakers
of English in the use of politeness strategies? From a theoretical
point of view, Study I was concerned with Lakoff'fs (1973b) claim
that politeness increases with decreasing imposition; Study II was
concerned with the distance-politeness hypothesis which predicts
that one will use polite strategies in situations where he perceives
himself as psychological and/or socially distant from his addresse.
From a pedagogical point of view, the comparison of the two studies
here suggested that the learner's ability of judging politeness in
the target language does not necessarily mean that he can use politeness
strategies appropriately in actual communication situations.
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