Process of EFL Learners’ Politeness Markers Development: A Sociocultural Perspective Journal Article

Writer: Mohammad Hosseinpur، Rasoul ؛ Bagheri Nevisi، Reza ؛

Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies Spring 2017, Volume 4 - Number 2 ISC (‎17 page(s) - From 109 to 125 )

Keywords: consciousness-raising Microgenetic development Pragmatics politeness markers

Abstract:

In spite of the crucial function of the politeness markers in the appropriate communication of the language learners, teachability of these markers has not received due attention in the pragmatic studies. Drawing upon House and Kasper’s (1981) influential taxonomy of politeness markers, the present study addressed teachability as well as the underlying process or microgenetic development of these markers in an EFL context. A population of 56 undergraduate participants underwent instruction through consciousnessraising (C-R) tasks for nine sessions. The data were obtained through repeated measurements during the first, third, fifth, seventh, and ninth sessions. The findings highlighted the effectiveness of the politeness markers instruction and suggested that the learners’ heavy reliance on some structures like “please” and consultative devices such as “willingness” and “ability” structures at early stages of data collection was mostly due to their unawareness of other politeness structures. This reliance decreased over time and was replaced by “play-downs” especially “progressive aspect + past tense” structure in the course of the instruction. Likewise, a wider range of simple politeness markers such as hedges, understaters, and downtoners which were absent in the learners’ early data increased steadily in their subsequent data. The findings highlight the acquisitional difficulty of pragmatic features and provide researchers, practitioners as well as language learners with information concerning the acquisitional sequence and order of pragmatic features in an EFL instructional context.

Machine summary:

<H2>Process of EFL Learners’ Politeness Markers Development: A Sociocultural Perspective</H2> Rasoul Mohammad Hosseinpur* Assistant Professor of TEFL; University of Qom <H2>Reza Bagheri Nevisi</H2> Assistant Professor of TEFL; University of Qom Abstract In spite of the crucial function of the politeness markers in the appropriate communication of the language learners, teachability of these markers has not received due attention in the pragmatic studies. To this end, the facilitative role of instruction and the process of developmental change or microgenetic development of the learners’ politeness marker use were probed through taking repeated measurements from the same group of learners at various points in time. Previous researches support learners’ strong preference for some strategies like imperatives (Felix- Brasdefer, 2012) and please (Barron, 2003; Safont-Jorda &amp; Alcon Soler, 2012) at early stages of learning a second/foreign language. The learners’ overuse of willingness and ability strategies as two subcomponents of &quot;consultative device&quot; at early stages of learning the second language is in accordance with the findings of previous studies (e. However, as time progressed and learners, as a result of instruction, came to know about the significance of pragmatics in general and politeness markers in particular, they deemed &quot;play-downs&quot; especially progressive aspect + past tense structure (I was wondering if ……. Contrary to Otcu and Zeyrek (2006), Schauer (2009), and Woodfield (2012) and concerning the simplicity of &quot;hedges&quot;, &quot;understaters&quot;, and &quot;downtoners&quot;, the results of this study revealed that the participants did not employ these politeness markers frequently in their requests at early data collection sessions.

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