Impoliteness in EFL: Foreign Language Learners’ Complaining Behaviors Across Social Distance and Status Levels

Agus Wijayanto, Aryati Prasetyarini and Mauly Halwat Hikmat

SAGE Open, 2017, vol. 7, issue 3, 2158244017732816

Abstract: A growing body of literature has investigated impoliteness in many domains. Nevertheless, little research has examined impoliteness done by foreign language learners. Impoliteness used in interlanguage complaints by English as a foreign language learners was observed. The effects of interlocutors’ different status levels and social distance on the use of impoliteness were analyzed. Empirical data were elicited by means of oral discourse completion tasks from 50 Indonesian English as a foreign language learners in Central Java, Indonesia. The overall direction of the findings showed trends that status levels and social distance between interlocutors prompted different frequencies and strategies of impoliteness. The frequent use of impolite complaints was instigated by a number of factors such as the learners’ understanding about the speech act in question, their perceptions on the social distance and status levels of interlocutors, and the nature of the research instrument.

Keywords: impoliteness; face attack; complaints; interlanguage pragmatics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:7:y:2017:i:3:p:2158244017732816

DOI: 10.1177/2158244017732816

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