Appraisal of the Politeness Principle: A Linguistic Analysis of Teacher-Student Conversation

This study is an appraisal the Politeness Principle as used in teacher-student conversation. Human society cannot
exist without the instrumentality of language. Language is used by people to communicate with their fellow human
beings across domains: schools, hospitals, markets, churches, mosques, homes, etc. Scholars acknowledge the fact
that language has positive and negative connotations. The subject of this study (politeness) essentially captures the
positive way of deploying language in conversations. Beyond a school setting, language can be used politely,
impolitely, as a face-saving act (FSA) and as a face-threatening act (FTA). However, there are usually
consequences for misusing language; for example, while impoliteness results in a face-threatening act, politeness
prevents it. In language and linguistics, theoretical frameworks are appraised in terms of their applicability,
relevance and potency in the elucidation of language use in different categories of texts (genres). Brown and
Levinson"s View on politeness, anchors this study, and the analyses rely on the Content Analysis Method. The
Random Sampling Method is used to select conversational turns from the recorded text. The study concludes that
politeness strategies used in the data include agreement, commendation, clarification, indirect speech act, among
others. Each of these strategies has specific communicative functions in the entire text.