Impolite Language Research Articles

Should We Teach the Impolite Language? A Study of Iranian EFL Learners, Teachers, Experts and Non-Iranian Experts‟ Attitudes

Unlike politeness which has greatly been studied by researchers, the impolite or rude language has mostly been neglected. The current study is an attempt to examine this neglected aspect of the language. The study has focused on whether the impoliteness aspect of language should be taught in an Iranian EFL context? To this purpose, four groups of participants, namely, language learners, language teachers, Iranian language experts, and non-Iranian language experts were surveyed for their ideas toward the impolite language. No significant difference was found in the ideas of the four groups concerning “the importance of impoliteness as compared to politeness”, “the equal treatment of genders in teaching impoliteness”, and also concerning “the context of teaching impoliteness”. Significant results were; however, found in their ideas concerning “the general significance of impoliteness in everyday language”, “teaching impoliteness in language classes”, “methods of teaching impoliteness (direct vs indirect)”, and “the level of proficiency required for teaching impoliteness”.

Politeness

Little progress has been made in modern politeness studies despite mountains of publications that have been bombarding the politeness market over the past three or so decades, rendering the latter in much a mess. It is argued in this paper that (1) politeness does not necessarily entail sincerity, and sincere politeness and insincere politeness should be distinguished; (2) there is no need to develop two different frameworks to account for politeness and impoliteness respectively; any framework that can be used to examine politeness phenomena should also aim for dealing with impoliteness phenomena; (3) polite language is not necessarily equated with politeness, and impolite language is not necessarily equated with impoliteness; and (4) though there is some need to differentiate between polite behaviour and politic behaviour, between politeness1 and politeness2, Watts’ (2003) work is problematic.