The Role Of Politeness In The Development Of L2 Pragmatics

Despite the significant role of politeness in communicative situations, Brown and Levinson (1987) contend that, beside politeness, every communicative act is fraught with perilous face-threatening acts (Kasper, 1990). Moreover, they claim that considering other aspects of “face” may allow a broader view of the facts that can help to avoid the polarity splitting the concept into Positive and Negative politeness (Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003). This proclamation has won the support of various writers such as Ellis, (2008); Harris, (2003) and Kasper, (1990) since it provides a practical ground for demarcating between inter and intra-cultural gradations of social realities (see Bremner, 2006).
Naturally, since politeness is culture specific and it
Under this new perspectivization, the role of teaching in the development of L2 pragmatics has received a lot of ink in the review of the literature (see Martinez- Flor et al, 2003; Kasper, 2001; Kasper & Rose, 2002). In general, the popular belief is that instruction on a variety of pragmatic features can benefit the learners considerably (Olshtain and Cohen, 1990; Takahashi, 2001; Rose and Ng Kwai-Fun, 2001, Safont,
It has been demonstrated that L2 learners which receive instruction on pragmatics features show a better handling of face threatening situations (Takahashi, 2001; Rose and Ng Kwai-Fun, 2001, Safont, 2005). The reason is that literacy on proper handling of politeness strategies provides worthwhile cognitive support for basic interpersonal communication skills which L2 learners need to use in order to communicate with others successfully. In other words, teaching of L2 pragmatics is of a great value which is often ignored in traditional language