Description and Analysis of Politeness in Informal Context Among Students Based on the Framework of Brown and Levinson

Since social interactions in a society play a significant role in creating community solidarity, it is vital to maintain and strengthen social relations and verbal communication. Politeness in verbal communication also plays an undeniable role in everyday life. The current research has investigated the politeness strategies in the informal context of the classroom, without the presence of the teacher, based on the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987). The data of the present research was collected during ten sessions held in three educational institutions and Payame Noor University in Bushehr. The population of the present study included 120 students, men and women, between 25 and 35 years old. From Brown and Levinson's fifteen positive politeness strategies, three strategies "joke," "use of in-group identity markers," and "offer, promise," and from negative politeness strategies, "be conventionally indirect," "being pessimistic," and "impersonalize S and H," have the highest frequency in the present study, respectively. The results indicate that positive politeness strategies are used almost twice as much as negative politeness strategies. Studying and researching in the field of politeness, while providing information about the cultural and social status of people, can also show how to observe politeness in the society.
Introduction
    Since communication between people and social interactions are inevitable, knowing how to communicate effectively can be considered essential for maintaining and stabilizing social relationships. Establishing successful communication in a language requires not only linguistic competence but also communicative competence. Acquiring communicative competence requires mastery of both verbal and non-verbal skills. One important verbal skill is politeness in speech. Different researchers have defined politeness in various ways. Brown and Levinson (1987) define politeness as paying attention to the “face” of both the speaker and the listener.
    According to Brown and Levinson (1987), whose theory is rooted in Goffman’s concept of face (1967) and Grice’s principles (1975), any behavior that aims to maintain the listener's face is considered polite. Brown and Levinson's theory focuses on preserving people’s face, defining politeness as paying attention to the listener's face and using strategies to minimize threats to it. According to them, “face is emotionally embedded in people and can be destroyed, maintained, and enhanced.” This theory distinguishes two types of face for each person: positive face and negative face. They further identified 15 language strategies as positive politeness and 10 strategies as negative politeness. Strategies aimed at maintaining a negative face are called “negative politeness,” whereas behaviors intended to maintain a positive face are called “positive politeness.”
    The classroom context is one of the settings in which politeness plays a significant role. Classroom interaction includes two types of interaction: interaction between the teacher and students, and interaction among the students themselves. In the first type, where the presence of the professor is central, the context is formal. In contrast, the second type, which occurs only among students and without the presence of the professor, is considered informal. This informal context is the focus of the current research. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze politeness strategies in informal classroom interactions, based on the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987). To achieve this objective, the following research questions are raised:

What are the positive politeness strategies used in informal classroom conversations?
To what extent are negative politeness strategies employed in informal classroom discussions?

Method
The research data was collected from ten classrooms across three institutes and Payame Noor University in Bushehr. The participants in these sessions were 120 students from the mentioned institutions. Each session lasted one and a half hours, and all conversations were audio-recorded. In the segments conducted informally, without the presence of the lecturer, the participants discussed and exchanged opinions on the topic under consideration in an informal environment.
    The content of the audio recordings, which totaled approximately fifteen hours, was transcribed. These qualitative data were then carefully examined, and about five hours of informal interactions, occurring without the presence of the lecturer, were selected for analysis. After identifying and coding the speech acts, each act was matched with the politeness strategies proposed in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) model. Specifically, the positive and negative politeness strategies introduced in Brown and Levinson’s framework were used to analyze the speech acts.
Results
     The data from the present research was transcribed and analyzed according to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) model, focusing on the positive and negative politeness strategies used in the speech acts during the sessions. In total, 220 instances of politeness strategies were identified, of which 141 were positive and 79 were negative. Among Brown and Levinson’s fifteen positive politeness strategies, the three most frequently used in this study were “joke,” “use of in-group identity markers,” and “offer/promise,” respectively. The most common negative politeness strategies observed in the data were “be conventionally indirect,” “being pessimistic,” and “impersonalize S and H.”
Conclusion
     As expected, consistent with other informal conversations, the use of negative politeness strategies was less frequent than positive politeness strategies, which reflects the informal nature of relationships among students in informal classroom interactions. This research aimed to accurately identify and illustrate potential positive and negative politeness strategies that can occur in informal settings.
    An important observation from this study is that, in some instances, speech acts exhibited both positive and negative politeness simultaneously, as illustrated in the examples from the collected data. In other words, positive and negative politeness strategies were occasionally employed together within the same interaction.
    Based on the research results, both positive and negative politeness strategies were used in informal Farsi. However, positive politeness occurred more frequently than negative politeness in this context. One key point in interpreting these results is that politeness is situational—the tendency to use positive or negative politeness depends on the specific situation and context. In cases where both strategies are employed together, the combination of verbal language and body language can help convey meaning and reduce misunderstandings between participants. Most of the strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), as the results indicate, can be effectively applied in informal interactions. Research on politeness not only provides insight into the cultural and social norms of a community but also demonstrates how politeness is observed and practiced in society.
Ethical Considerations
Not applicable
Funding
Not applicable
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.