A Study On Politeness Strategies Of Teacher Talk On Students’ Compliance In Senior High School English Classes

Teacher talk plays an important role in English classroom interaction.Especially for Chinese students who do not have a second language environment,teacher talk provides students with indispensable language input and works as an important part of students’ language acquisition.Studies have shown that during the interaction,the politeness strategies used by teachers consciously or unconsciously have a positive impact on students’ learning motivation,learning ability and polite quality.However,the focus on the influence of teachers’ politeness strategies on students’ compliance is rather limited.This study based on Brown and Levinson’s(1978)politeness strategies as the analytical framework,tries to explore the following two questions:(1)What types of politeness strategies are adopted by the teachers to the students in teaching process of the three schools in H city?(2)Do teacher’s politeness strategies affect students’ compliance? What’s the relationship between teacher’s politeness strategies and students’ compliance? Ten English classes chosen from three senior high schools in H City were selected as the research objects.Data were collected through classroom observation,questionnaires and interviews.After classroom observation,teachers’ discourses were divided into four types: academic instruction,motivation,evaluation and classroom management.A questionnaire was designed to investigate senior high school students’ compliance to positive politeness strategies,negative politeness strategies,off record politeness strategies,bald on record strategy and face-threatening acts.With sampling interviews,the results of the questionnaire were further compared and analyzed.Results indicate that:(1)Teachers employ diverse types of politeness strategies in different classroom discourse,and its frequency from high to low ranks as positive politeness strategy,bald on record strategy,negative politeness strategy and off record politeness strategy.Among them,the application of sub-strategies under positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies are different.In addition,different teachers have their personal features in quantity and preference in applying politeness strategies.(2)Teacher talk has three universal impacts on students’ compliance: teacher’s use of positive politeness strategy,negative politeness strategy and bald on record strategy have a positive impact on students’ compliance;teacher’s use of off record politeness strategy has a negative influence on students.Furthermore,there exist cases that teachers’ politeness strategies have no influence on students’ compliance.In this case,students’ compliance is based more on personal factors and herd mentality.Based on the above results,the study provides inspirations for the front-line high school English teachers in classroom discourse as follows.First,teachers should improve their awareness of politeness and pay attention to the cultivation of students’ pragmatic competence in senior high school English classes.Second,teachers should be attentive to the reasonable and appropriate use of politeness strategies in their discourse for the purpose of arousing students’ learning involvement.Last,but not the least,teachers should refresh their teaching philosophy,emphasizing not only on language form but also on language function.