Politeness Strategies in Request E-Mails of Iraqi Undergraduate Student

Abstract

The aim of this study was to identify the politeness strategies employed by Iraqi EFL undergraduate learners in their request emails to their lecturers during their study period in Malaysia. A content and discourse analysis approaches were conducted to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the data. Emails were analyzed first for the level of directness following the framework proposed by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989). This contributed to assign the types of the politeness strategy used in students’ emails following Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory. The results showed that students used almost a variety of politeness strategies as they used varied levels of directness. Positive politeness strategy was the most prominent as the students mainly expressed their opinion, agreement and disagreement through their requests, which requires positive politeness to save the positive face of the addressee. The findings also showed that Iraqi undergraduate students are mitigating the possible threat to each other’s face by using expressions of positive politeness to show solidarity, like-mindedness and friendship.