Abstract (eng)
Politeness plays an essential role in the classroom. Teachers as well as learners need to show appropriate behavior in different contexts in order to conduct the lesson in an effective way. However, what can be considered as appropriate behavior depends on factors, such as the intention of an utterance, the relationship between teachers and students, and the teaching method, among others. Consequently, the appropriate use of politeness strategies is strongly dependent on its context.
Over the last decades, researchers have shown that politeness theories also vary inter-culturally. However, it has hardly been investigated in how far politeness strategies differ between cultures, although they are used in the same context and for the same purpose.
The practical part of this thesis compares the use of politeness strategies in Austrian and Spanish classrooms with English as both, the target and working language. Based on Brown and Levinson’s (1978, 1987) classification of politeness strategies, transcribed lessons will be analyzed and compared. Despite different cultural backgrounds, results show that there are hardly any differences in the use of politeness strategies in the Austrian and Spanish English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom.
Since teachers and learners work towards the same goal, namely the development of competence, this could serve as a possible explanation. However, in order to get more insight into this complex field, it would be necessary to establish special frameworks for analyzing classroom politeness.