A comparative analysis of politeness strategies employed by Turkish and American academicians

Abstract

Employing the theoretical framework proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), a study was conducted to find whether or not there are differences in the use and number of the politeness strategies employed by American Native Speakers of English (NSE), Turkish teachers of English (EFL) and Native speakers of Turkish (NST). This study also attempted to find out whether and to what extent the speech acts of favor asking (Low and High imposition), complaining and griping are face threatening. The effect of contextual variables, that is, power, social distance, ranking of imposition and gender were also studied to contribute to our understanding of the concept of verbal politeness in these societies. A questionnaire consisting of 24 speech situations with 6 types of equal and unequal social status was administered to 70 volunteers. The results of this study revealed that there are significant differences among the groups in their choice of strategies in the realization of the speech acts. In most of the cases, the EFL group deviated from both the NSE and NST groups. Also, the EFL group, in 14 out of 16 situations, employed the highest number of strategies and this made their utterances the most lengthy ones. The NST and EFL groups by modifying their employed strategies, displayed more sensitivity towards the gender variable, but the NSE group did not consider the gender variable as an important factor to change the strategies. Further analyses showed that all of the groups found FAL (Favor Asking Low) and GR (Griping) less face threatening than the FAH (Favor Asking High) and CM (Complaining), respectively. Also, for the EFL and NST groups, the power of the interlocutors was considered to be an important factor to choose the strategies; however, it was not the case with the NSE group. In sum, it would be possible to say that the variables included in this study are perceived differently by the survey groups and this can bring about cross-cultural miscommunication.