THE EFFECT OF IRANIAN FEMALE EFL LEARNERS’ POLITENESS STRATEGIES AWARENESS ON THEIR LETTER WRITING ABILITY


FAEZEH YOUSEFIAN DASTMALCHI
The Effect of Iranian Female EFL Learners’ Politeness Strategies Awareness on Their Letter Writing Ability

THEEFFECTOFIRANIANFEMALEEFLLEARNERS’
POLITENESSSTRATEGIESAWARENESSONTHEIRLETTER

WRITINGABILITY

FaezehYousefianDastmalchi
English Department, Islamic Azad University, Torbat-e-Heydarieh branch, Iran

Email: faezeh.yousefian2013@yahoo.com

APA Citation: Dastmalchi, F. Y. (2014). Iranian female EFL learners’ politeness strategies
awareness on their letter writing ability. English Review: Journal of English
Education 3(1), 22- 30

Received: 03-11-2014 Accepted: 12-11-2014 Published: 01-12-2014

Abstract: This research examines the effect of teaching politeness strategies based on the
models proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) and Leech (1983) to intermediate English
learners on their ability in writing more polite letters. The instrumentation includes an
IELTS test, used as a placement test, an inventory, used to measure learners’ awareness of
politeness strategies, and a letter-writing test, used as a measurement of learners’ ability in
using politeness strategies. Among all the participants, twenty of them were put in the
control group, and twenty-four of them in the experimental group, who went under the
treatment. They were taught how to write politely based on the politeness strategy models
proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) and Leech (1983). After the treatment, learners
wrote letters to the same people with the same situations. Comparing the twenty learners
in the control group with the twenty-four learners in experimental group, the researchers
concluded that the treatment had a significant effect on the learners’ ability in writing more
polite letters. They selected to use more formal strategies with those who they saw further
distance with, and more informal strategies with more intimate people. Furthermore, the
answers the learners provided to the questions of the inventory offered more awareness of
politeness strategies. This implies that they were more aware of various choices of polite
language that were available for them to use in the given situations.
Keywords: politeness strategy, face, face threatening act

INTRODUCTION
According to Wardhaugh (2006), as

we speak, we choose what to say, how
to say it, and the best way to unite the
what with the how. This how and what
are both two important and inseparable
aspects of speaking. Social relationship
between the speaker and the listener
determines the linguistic choices a
speaker makes.

In Watts (2003: 29) words,
“language and forms of language
behavior are at the heart of social
communication and the reproduction of

social structure. So the study of politic
behavior and linguistic politeness lies at
the heart of socio-communicative verbal
interaction.”

As Coulmas (2007) puts it, speakers
have to make choices, because things
may be formulated in a different way.
All people have strong feelings about
what they say and what they mean and
they say what they believe they should,
although sometimes they seem not to
believe in their own words. Coulmas
(2007) also believes that “sociolinguistics
is the linguistics of choice”, so there will



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 3, Issue 1, December 2014 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

be “freedom of the will, human action
and language”, and this “presupposes
and agent rather than an automaton.”

What is considered polite,
Gumperz (1987) suggests, may differ
among various groups, situations, and
individuals. If we can find a
grammatical and social rule for it,
according to this variation and the
recurrent patterns used, we will be able
to demonstrate the social nature of
human language.

Brown & Levinson (1987) believe
that the key problem in the area of
sociolinguistics is to determine the
nature and origin of the social power of
linguistic forms. Some linguists see this
as based on the social value of the
group who use that linguistic form.
Some others believe that it is the social
characteristics of the participant and
settings that determine the social
valence of the form. They claim that
linguistic form of messages should be
seen as tools for doing things in order
for their social values to be ascertained.
Brown and Levinson introduce two
important sources for the social valence
of linguistic forms; first, the intrinsic
potential impact that a communicative
intention has on social relationships,
and second, the modification of that
intention by the participants in order
for that to have a specific impact.

For Brown & Levinson (1987),
“communicative intentions have built-
in social implications, often of a
threatening sort” (p. 281). These
communicative intentions are
constrained to pragmatic resources of
the language in order to show the
construction of messages. Various uses
of such pragmatic resources in different
situations are the special interest of
sociolinguistics, and this has made
Brown & Levinson’s slogan:

“Sociolinguistics should be applied
pragmatics” .Nature and distribution of
the constraints give the social structures
its form. These constraints are more on
form than on content (Brown &
Levinson, 1987). Linguistic politeness
involves verbal strategies to keep social
interaction friction free (Nwoye, 1992).

There are many studies that touch
on the issue of the relationship between
politeness and other factors such as
gender (see for example Gharaghani,
Rasekh, Dabaghi, Tohidian, 2011, Dus
and Franch, 2003, Kaul, Kurkarni, 2010,
Gomez, 2000), cultural norms (see for
example Le Ha, 2001, Salom & Monreal,
2009, Bargiela-Chiappini, Kádár, 2011,
Song, 2012), power (Locher, 2004,
Hendry, 1995, Holmes, Stubbe, 2003). In
the following, some of these researches
have been mentioned.

In a research done by Gharaghani,
Rasekh, Dabaghi, Tohidian (2011), cross
gender differences in the degree of
politeness in greetings of EFL learners
were examined. The results show that
gender has a significant effect on the
degree of formality in Persian greetings.
In addition, Iranian learners transferred
their Persian greeting styles into
English situations. They tended their
greetings to be polite, but they were
inappropriate according to American
norms. Generally, it seemed that they
were not equipped with appropriate
tools to express greeting according to
the status of the interlocutors,
situational context and native culture.

Biesenbach-Lucas (2007), in his
research on e-politeness among native
and non-native speakers of English,
found that native speakers demonstrate
more politeness strategies in their
messages to their professors than non-
native speakers. Native and non-native
speakers preferred different politeness

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FAEZEH YOUSEFIAN DASTMALCHI
The Effect of Iranian Female EFL Learners’ Politeness Strategies Awareness on Their Letter Writing Ability

devices for their requests. This can be
due to the fact that non-native speakers
are not taught enough of politeness
strategies in order to use in their
messages. He shows that students use
more direct strategies for lower
imposition requests- i.e. for making
appointments and asking for feedback
on their work, in contrast with higher
imposition requests such as extension of
the deadlines. This suggests that
students are aware of situational factors
and do not consider all email requests of
faculty equal. Also, they used more
politeness devices with direct request
strategies and fewer politeness strategies
with indirect request strategies.

Dus and Franch (2003) investigated
Spanish and British undergraduates’
perceptions of appropriate requests in
different situations in terms of gender
and politeness. On the whole, no
significant differences were found in
males and females use of alerter
(formal/informal attention getters and
greetings, naming strategies and terms
of endearment). However, there were
some differences in cross-gender speech
in particular situations such as opening
elements, which were used more by
females than males. Also, men used
more attention getters than women.
Spanish participants frequently used
involvement strategies which confirm
that Spanish is a “positively politeness-
oriented culture”. Male and female
British participants used similar
number of alerters. The difference was
in the type of alerters males and females
used. British females used twice as
many thanking responses as males, and
so they were considered as showing
deference more than males. As a
conclusion, this research questions the
stereotypical correlation between males
and impoliteness and females and

politeness. Both males and females
showed politeness in their speech and
the difference was in situations where
solidarity and deference was
considered. Gender cannot be an
independent variable in determining
language use.

Le Ha (2001) studied how
Vietnamese culturally situated notions
of polite forms influence English
writing styles of four Vietnamese
postgraduate students who were
studying in Australian universities. It
was found that cultural differences as
well as socio-political factors and
educational factors were the reasons
influencing how students write. In his
paper, he suggested that Australian
academics make students with different
backgrounds aware of how they were
expected to write based on Australian
socio-political practices. He found that
as soon as the students were aware of
this, they were able to adjust.

Chen (1999) has studied self-
politeness in contrast to other-oriented
politeness. By self-politeness, he means
the cases in communication where the
speaker’s need to protect his own face
influences what she says and how she
says it. “Self” does not only refer to the
speaker herself, but to those aligned
with her such as her family, friends,
colleagues, clients, and even her
profession. Likewise, “other” refers to
not only the hearer but also those
aligned with the hearer. He states that
in the studies on politeness the
researcher includes self-politeness in
addition to other-oriented politeness
and this is because the face of the
speaker is as vulnerable as the face of
the hearer.

Fukushima and Iwana (1985: 12)
studied Japanese students to see
whether they use politeness strategies



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 3, Issue 1, December 2014 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

while speaking English and how much
they are successful in using them. They
concluded that “a better understanding
of politeness features in English will
help EFL students to communicate
more effectively as competent
speakers”.

Different aspects of letter writing
has been discussed and taught to
students in writing classes. However,
there seems to be a lack of attention to
the sociolinguistics aspects of letter
writing (Schmidt, 1993; Rose & Kasper,
2001), including politeness strategies
use. Learners are supposed to have
already acquired politeness strategies
sociolinguistically; however, most
second language learners are not
sufficiently exposed to the related
contexts in order to acquire those
strategies.

This research seeks to contribute to
the field of second language writing. It
aims at testing students’ politeness
strategy use in letter writing. Having
analyzed the data, the results can be
applied to explore learners’ problematic
areas of politeness strategy use.

METHOD
The study used a quasi-

experimental design to examine
politeness strategies awareness of
Iranian higher-intermediate female
students and their ability in letter
writing. This study focused on a
randomly selected population of 75
learners of upper-intermediate level
studying English in two English Schools
in Mashhad, Iran. As the participants
were chosen among the learners of two
different English institutes, they were
studying different upper-intermediate
books. Thirty-eight of them were
studying the upper-intermediate book
American English File 4 (by Oxenden &

Latham-Koenig, 2008, Oxford
University Press), and the other thirty-
seven were studying Passages 1 (by
Richards & Sandy, second edition, 2008,
Cambridge University Press). All of
them were female students in an age
range of 17-25.

The researchers in this study
investigated the effect of politeness
strategies awareness of Iranian higher-
intermediate female students on their
letter writing ability. They were asked
to write a letter to four people: their
friend, their teacher, an unknown
English-speaking person, and an
unknown Persian-speaking person, all
of whom were supposed to be females.
There were 24 learners in the
experimental group and 20 in the
control group.

The learners were homogenized
using an IELTS test as the placement
test. Among all of the 75 learners who
took the test, 48 learners got the band
score of 6 or above and were chosen for
the study. Before the treatment, both
control group and experimental group
were given an inventory to test their
awareness of politeness strategies, and
a letter-writing test in order to test their
current ability in the performance of
politeness strategies use in letter
writing.

The participants filled out the
inventory, which checked their
awareness of politeness strategies. It
was designed based on the criteria used
in the study as politeness strategies
awareness. In the letter-writing test,
they faced four different situations. In
the first situation, participants were
asked to write a letter to one of their
female friends and ask for help with
their English language proficiency. In
the second letter, they wrote to their
female teacher and requested her to



FAEZEH YOUSEFIAN DASTMALCHI
The Effect of Iranian Female EFL Learners’ Politeness Strategies Awareness on Their Letter Writing Ability

help them with their reading skill
improvement. The third situation was
writing a letter to a female university
student studying in Harvard University,
whom they did not know; someone
they have never seen, talked or written
to. They asked her for information
about the university she is studying at.
In the last situation, participants wrote
a letter to the supervisor of an institute
to ask for some information about the
job vacancies.

The treatment took eight sessions
of about 30 minutes. All that was taught
was based on the politeness strategy
models of Brown and Levinson (1987)
and Leech (1983). The first session
learners were introduced to what
would happen in the course. The
inventory and the letter-writing test
were given to the learners in this
session. During sessions 2-7 learners got
familiar with the politeness strategies
based on Brown and Levinson’s and
Leech’s models. There were some
exercises designed by the researchers in
order for the learners to practice the
new strategy they had just learned. In
the last session, the participants filled in
the inventory again to be checked for
any rise in the awareness of politeness
strategy use. In addition, the same
writing test was given to the learners in
order to see whether there was any
improvement in the use of politeness
strategies in their letters after
comparing them to the letters they had
written before the treatment.

At the same time, the participants
in the control group were attending
their English classes, being taught the
usual materials of their book, without
receiving any additional treatment on
polite language.

The participants’ pre-tests and
post-tests were analyzed by two raters

in terms of politeness strategies they
had applied in each situation and then
scored. The scores of the two groups,
control group and experimental group,
were compared to see if the two groups
had performed in the same way before
the experimental group had undergone
the treatment. Meanwhile, the scores of
the participants in each group before
and after the treatment were compared
to seek any improvement as a result of
receiving the treatment in the
experimental group and the lack of the
treatment in the control group.

On the one hand, the letter writing
tests were scored based on the criteria
used in scoring writing section of IELTS
test. On the other hand, to measure and
score the use of politeness strategies in
the participants’ writing tests, the
frameworks based on the “matrix
criteria of politeness strategy” by
Brown and Levinson (1987) and the
Politeness maxims of Leech (1983) were
used.

Furthermore, the inventories
answered by the participants are scored
and compared in the same way that the
letter writing tests were compared.

RESULTSANDDISCUSSION
In order to decide whether the

treatment has improved the
participants’ awareness of politeness
strategies, politeness questionnaire
results are analyzed in this part. The
questionnaires learners in both control
and experimental groups had filled in
and those completed after the treatment
were compared to observe any
improvement of the learners’ awareness
of different politeness strategies.

As Table 1 reveals, the results of the
questionnaire in pretest for the control
(=59.7000) and experimental (=59.5833)
group confirm that there is no significant



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 3, Issue 1, December 2014 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

difference between the participant’s
scores in politeness awareness in control
and experimental groups in the pretest
phase. In other words, the participants in

both groups were in the same level of
awareness of politeness strategies before
the treatment of the study.

Table 1. Pre-test and post-test results of politeness awareness questionnaire
Groups P-value
Control Experimental

No. 20 24
Pre-test scores 59.7000 59.5833 .961
Post-test scores 59.8500 75.3333 .0001

According to table 1, in the
significant level of %5, there was a
significant difference in the
participants’ scores in control (=59.8500)
and experimental (=75.3333) groups in
post-test of politeness strategies
awareness, and this means that the
treatment has improved participants’
awareness of politeness strategies. The
raise of the participants’ scores in the
post-test letter-writing tests can prove
this result.

In order to confirm the findings of
the questionnaire, the researchers
provided seven open-ended questions
at the end of the inventory. These
questions were designed to elicit
responses that showed the participants’
level of awareness of polite language.
The responses the participants made
before and after the treatment revealed
that the treatment had had a significant
effect on the awareness and hence the
use of politeness strategies by them,
which confirmed the findings of the
whole survey. After the treatment, the
participants tended to use more and a
wider variety of politeness strategies in
the responses they made to the open-
ended questions.

In the following, the first question
of the qualitative part of the
questionnaire is brought as an example,
along with the replies the learners

tended to give before and after the
treatment:

What phrases or words do you use
when you want to speak or write
politely in English?
- Replies before the treatment: please,
could you, can you.

- Repliesafterthetreatment:please,could
you,canyou,I’msorrytobotheryou,you
mustforgiveme,I wonderifI could
As the learners’ replies in this

example show, before the treatment,
they had in mind just three of politeness
strategies, but after the treatment, they
showed awareness of more choices of
polite language. In order to explore any
effects of the treatment on participants’
ability in politeness strategies use, the
results of letter-writing tests were
analyzed.

Learners’ letter-writing papers in
both control and experimental groups
were corrected and scored by two raters
with a focus on general appropriateness
of cohesion and coherence and
politeness strategies use. The pre-test
scores of both groups as well as their
scores of post-test were compared to
find out whether the treatment had had
an effect on learners’ ability in using
politeness strategies. Table 3.2
summarizes the scores of learners in
control (N=20) and experimental (N=24)
groups in both pre-test and post-test of



FAEZEH YOUSEFIAN DASTMALCHI
The Effect of Iranian Female EFL Learners’ Politeness Strategies Awareness on Their Letter Writing Ability

letter-writing. P-values are also shown
in this table.

As the results of Table 2 shows,
there is no significant difference
between the participants’ letter-writing

test scores in pretest in control
(=22.3500) and experimental (=24.4500)
group, which confirms the homogeneity
of the participants before the treatment.

Table 2. Pre-test and post-test scores of letter-writing of control and experimental groups
Groups P-value

Control Experimental
No. 20 24
Pre-test score 22.3500 23.0417 .253
Post-test score 24.4500 31.2500 .0001

Using T-Test method, the
participants’ letter-writing scores in
post-test in both control (= 24.4500) and
experimental (=31.2500) groups are
compared, and it can be seen that in the
significant level of %5, there is a
significant difference in the scores of the
control and experimental groups. As it
was already stated, in evaluating the
letters, a part of the score was given to
the correct use of politeness strategies.
In addition, as the p-value was smaller
than 0.5 (0.0001) for the post-test of
letter-writing, the first null hypothesis

was rejected and it was confirmed that
the treatment on the experimental
group has had a significant effect on the
participant’s ability in using politeness
strategies in writing letters.

The pre-test and post-test given to
both control and experimental groups
required learners to write letters to a
close friend and to a teacher.
Afterwards, they were corrected by two
raters and scored to investigate any
effect of the treatment on the learners in
experimental group. The scores are
shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Pre-test and post-test results of letter-writing to a teacher and a friend
Groups P-value

Control Experimental
No. 20 24
Pre-test scores 11.2000 11.5833 .389
Post-test scores 13.4500 15.7500 .0001

Here, the T-Test is about the scores
of letter-writing to a close friend and a
teacher in the pretest phase for both
control and experimental groups.

According to table 3, there is no
significant difference between the
scores obtained by participants in
experimental (=11.5833) and control
(=11.2000) groups in the pretest in
writing a letter to a close friend and to a
teacher.

In addition, as illustrated in Table 3,
p-value = 0.0001, which means in the

significant level of %5, there is a
significant difference between the
scores of control (=13.4500) and
experimental (=15.7500) groups in post-
test of letter-writing to a close friend
and a teacher. Therefore, because of the
raise of their scores as well as the p-
value being smaller than 0.5 (0.0001) for
the post-test of letter-writing, the
second null hypothesis was rejected and
it can be concluded that the treatment
has improved the participants’ ability in
using politeness strategies use in



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 3, Issue 1, December 2014 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

writing letters to a close friend and a
teacher.

The next T-Test is for the
participants in both control and
experimental group writing to an
unknown native speaker of English and
an unknown native speaker of Persian
in the pre-test and post-test phase, the

results of which are shown in Table 3.4.
Learners’ scores in both pre-test and
post-test were determined by two raters
and were compared for any
improvement in the learners’ ability in
experimental group in using politeness
strategies in letter-writing.

Table 4. Pre-test and post-test results of letter-writing to an unknown
native speaker of English and to an unknown native speaker of Persian

Groups P-value
Control Experimental

No. 20 24
Pre-test scores 11.2000 11.3750 .654
Post-test scores 11.2000 15.6667 .0001

As table 4 illustrates, there is no
significant difference between the
scores of control (=11.2000) and
experimental (=11.3750) groups in
pretest letter-writing to a native speaker
of English and a native speaker of
Persian, as the p-value= .654.

The results shown in table 3.4 also
suggest that there is a significant
difference in the scores obtained by the
participants in control (=11.2000) and
experimental (=15.6667) groups in post-
test letter writing to a native speaker of
English and a native speaker of
Persian. . In addition, as the p-value
was smaller than 0.5 (0.0001) for the
post-test of letter-writing, the third null
hypothesis was rejected. Therefore, it
can be concluded that the treatment had
improved the ability of the participants
to use politeness strategies while
writing a letter to an unknown native
speaker of Persian and an unknown
native speaker of English.

Results of both the inventory and
the letter-writing test revealed in the
previous part determined that the
mentioned null hypotheses of the study
were rejected. This means that the
treatment had improved the

participants’ scores in post-test letter-
writing test, which means they used
correct and enough of politeness
strategies in their letters. Furthermore,
the results of the inventory indicated
that the participants’ awareness of the
study had improved by going under the
treatment.

CONCLUSION
As observed by the obtained

results, the treatment, i.e. teaching
learners what strategies they can use to
seem more polite culturally (and
globally), had a significant effect on
their behavior. The answers the learners
provided to the questions of the
inventory offered more awareness of
politeness strategies. This implies that
they were more aware of various
choices of polite language that were
available for them to use in the given
situations. They tended to use a more
variety of replying politely to those
situations, whereas they used to pick up
more or less the same way of
responding.

Furthermore, the letter-writing
post-tests suggested that the
participants’ ability in using politeness



FAEZEH YOUSEFIAN DASTMALCHI
The Effect of Iranian Female EFL Learners’ Politeness Strategies Awareness on Their Letter Writing Ability

strategies had improved to a great
degree and they used more polite
language. Learners were taught that not
every strategy was appropriate for
every situation. The result of teaching
them this point was noticeably seen in
the post-test they were given, as they
had a tendency to use a strategy they
already knew for nearly all the
situations they were given in the pre-
test phase. They selected to use more
formal strategies with those who they
saw further distance with, and more
informal strategies with more intimate
people.

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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/08894906/11/3