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Authors: Halima Benzdira
Keywords: face management, intercultural communication, politeness, speech acts
Abstract: The present study explores the use of politeness patterns within the realization of requests. The data are derived from a case study focusing on a group of eight Algerian Ph.D. students at Manchester Metropolitan University, and focusses on how the request strategies chosen affect the responses they receive from their supervisors. More specifically, it investigates how these participants enact their various intentions using different politeness techniques, as well as different requesting strategies to achieve their interactional goals in an asymmetrical power-relation context. Further, the study details the supervisors’ responses, and through these, it examines the perceptions made about the students. Positioned at the intersection of politeness studies, speech act research, and interlanguage pragmatics, the study takes a Socio-Pragmatic approach informed by a Pragma-Linguistic perspective in its analysis, and in the way it tackles cultural and personal dimensions, which may affect the strategies/responses during the interlocutors' conversations. The significance of this study resides in three areas. First, that the theoretical approach, it takes, challenges the traditional and influential theories of speech acts (Austin, 1962) and politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1987); the study also aims to extend and revise an existing response model to im/politeness (Bousfield, 2008) in interaction. Put differently, the study aims at challenging, redefining and testing models within speech act theory and im/politeness theories through marrying two approaches (traditional or classic and discursive) to the study of speech act, politeness and impoliteness and through these, it shows how the “FACE” as a concept is constructed. Second, at a methodological level, the study revises one of the commonly established data collection tools (Discourse Completion Tasks) in pragmatics. Finally, the contextual contribution of the study manifests itself in the underrepresented North African (Algerian) Arabic speaking population. Therefore, following a Mixed Approach paradigm, two data collection tools are used: revised written Discourse completion Tasks (DCTs) and follow up semi-structured one-to-one interviews. The analytical framework of the study draws from both quantitative and qualitative paradigms. Accordingly, analyzing discourse completion tasks aim primarily at uncovering the different politeness and requesting strategies, and how their use might affect the responses (responsive strategies) initiated by the supervisors. Therefore, a quantitative account for the occurrence of different politeness strategies is taken into consideration. Later, semi-structured interviews with the participants are conducted to uncover the underpinning intentions of using particular linguistics formulae and how participants manage to deliver their intentions to achieve their communicative goals and have their requests fulfilled (Students). Additionally, the supervisors’ interviews will reveal how they perceive the requests they receive from their students; and more importantly, how they perceive the students themselves. Through interviews, the researcher also looks at whether students’ intentions meet with the supervisors' responses or not.