Politeness Strategies in Higher Education: A Student Approach to the Sense of Humour

Abstract

The issue of pragmatic politeness has a growing impact in all sustainable communities. The positive politeness strategies enhance the community spirit due to their benefits regarding the close relationships among its members. The marks of positive politeness are some specific communicative behaviours identified at verbal interactional level. One of these stands in ludic or playful behaviour that might be expressed as humour. The playful attitude towards the message fulfils functions that overlaps the communication situation, showing the transmitter's care, the empathetic attitude towards the receiver's problems and needs. In this manner, reducing the distance between interlocutors outlines the group identity. On the other hand, the humour represents in educational field a mean to strengthen the referential power of teachers. Therefore, our research interest to investigate the students’ perception about the values and attitudes related to the sense of humour identified in their teachers’ behaviour becomes legitimate. The questionnaire-based inquiry was developed in the first semester of the academic year 2019-2020, among the students from Transilvania University enrolled in senior years of Bachelor degree. Our results are in line with some findings of a previous research regarding the communicative styles of primary school teachers. The playful behaviour differentiate the profiles of effective teachers. The specific of educational relationships has its own background in higher education. The students’ perception about their professors’ sense of humour confirm that sense of humour is seen like an artifice to reduce the distance and increase the effectiveness.