Positive Politeness Strategies in EFL Classroom

Abstract

Learning a foreign language involves not only knowing how to speak and write well, but also how to behave linguistically. Therefore, the teacher-students interaction in class in influenced by their pragmatic knowledge, how to behave and respond in different situations and contexts. This study approaches teacher-student interaction in EFL classroom from pragmatic perspective. It focuses on linguistic politeness; that is, the ways of the teacher expresses politeness verbally through teachers’ use of language. This study explores positive politeness strategies used by the teacher in three 90-minutes English lessons in a senior high school. The data were video-recorded from three different classroom setting where English is the object and the medium of teaching and learning process. The analysis was based on Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies. The results show that there are six strategies that emerged in the teacher-students interaction, namely: strategy 2: exaggerate interest, approval, sympathy with hearer; strategy 4: use in-group identity marker; strategy 5: seek agreement; strategy 10: offers, promise; strategy 12: including both speaker and hearer in an activity and strategy 13: giving and asking a reason. The age difference, institutional setting, power and the linguistic ability of the students has contributed to the different choices of positive politeness strategies.