Gender Use of Politeness Strategies in Classroom Interactions: The Case of CEIL Multilingual Learners

Abstract

It is impressive to revisit some of the early motivations for politeness research and connect them to the present facts and reflections in the field of sociolinguistics .The present research explores three interrelated topics; politeness, gender and classroom interactions, which are often studied separately. The problematic raised try to figure out the impact of gender use of politeness strategies in classroom interactions. The overall aim is to examine the linguistic use of politeness among students of different age and cultural background gathered to learn foreign languages. The participants are influenced by many social and cultural aspects that construct a varied sample. This issue is explored through note-taking, observation, questionnaires and a discourse completion test to check the degree of gender politeness. The formal data collection instruments, methods and techniques aim at making a coherent connection between the topics that are often studied separately explaining gender use of codes in classroom interactions. The results show that the social variables affect gender use of politeness strategies in interactions depending on the situation. Besides, males are polite more than females in some contexts. Recommendations are made for future researchers and teachers to deal with such issues in EFL classrooms.