Some Notes on Linguistic Politeness and Its Relation to Second Language Teaching

Abstract

Linguists’ interest in pragmatics is growing fast as the result
of a major shift of attention to language as behavior. This
growth should bring about awareness among second
language teaching practitioners of the importance of
incorporating pragmatic skills in all venues of their
teaching. Linguistic politeness is one major area of concern
in pragmatics and one that has much been thought of as
being directly relevant to people’s communicative
behaviors in social interaction. As second language
teaching is meant to help learners acquire the competence to
use the target language in real communication, this
competence should enbed, among others, pragmatic
abilities, which enable them to use the language
appropriately politely. Second language learners need to be
socialized and sensitized to politeness tactics and strategies
in the target language because to be able to communicate
well in the target language they have to master the tactics
and strategies of politeness in that language. It is hardly
enough that second language teachers only engage them in
learning the structure and vocabulary of the target language
without giving them competence in using the language to
communicate naturally by applying politeness norms
appropriate to the interactional situation.