A study on politeness strategies in the conversations of the course book topnotch 2 pre intermediate (the first edition

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
University of languages and international studies
Faculty of post-graduate studies

VŨ THỊ THANH HUYỀN

A Study on Politeness Strategies in the Conversations of the
Coursebook “Top Notch 2” Pre-intermediate (the First Edition)
Nghiên cứu về chiến lược lịch sự trong các bài hội thoại của
giáo trình giao tiếp “Top Notch 2” Pre-intermediate
(phiên bản đầu tiên)

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60.22.15

hanoi – 2013


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
University of languages and international studies
Faculty of post-graduate studies

VŨ THỊ THANH HUYỀN

A Study on Politeness Strategies in the Conversations of
the Coursebook “Top Notch 2” Pre-intermediate (the First
Edition)
Nghiên cứu về chiến lược lịch sự trong các bài hội thoại của
giáo trình giao tiếp “Top Notch 2” Pre-intermediate (phiên bản

đầu tiên)

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60.22.15
Supervisor: ĐỖ THỊ THANH HÀ, Ph.D.

Hanoi, 2013


DECLARATION

I hereby certify that the thesis entitled
A Study on Politeness Strategies in the Conversations of the Coursebook “Top
Notch 2” Pre-intermediate (the First Edition)
Is the result of my own research in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the
degree of Master of Art at University of Languages and International Studies, VNU
Hanoi.I certify that this thesis has not been submitted for any other degree at any
other university or institution.

Ha Noi, December, 2013
Author‟s signature

Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

i


ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

I would like to express my thanks to all those who have assisted me in my
research work.
To my supervisor Dr. Do ThiThanh Ha, I owe a special debt of gratitude for
her great encouragement, constructive guidance and precious comment as well as
suggestionson my thesis writing.
I also wish to acknowledge my deep gratitude to all the teachers of Faculty
of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, VNU
for furnishing me with valuable knowledge and experience during the course.
My special thanks also go to my colleagues and friends for their assistance in
completing the research.
To all the authors of the publications in the list of references, I offer my
sincere thanks for the ideas from which I have benefited.
My final heart-felt thanks are given to my family members, without whose
moral support, unfailing love and encouragement, I could not have got this far.

ii


ABSTRACT

It is undeniable that English nowadays has become indispensable means of
international communication. However, there are still a large number of Vietnamese
EFL learners who have not achieved success in using English in their
communication since they may face difficulty understanding the content of
conversation or expressing exactly what they mean. One of the significant factors
necessary for students to get more successful in English conversations is the
awareness of politeness strategieswhich are implicitly introduced in textbooks.
The study is conducted using descriptive qualitative research method to find
out politeness strategies in the course book “Top Notch 2” (the First Edition). In

order to fulfill these aims, the author picked up 150 utterances from the sound bites
and the conservation models in the course book to analyze in the light of politeness
theory proposed by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987). The findings and results of
the study show that most of negative and positive politeness strategies are found in
the conversations and among them positive politeness strategies 4, 5 and 2, negative
politeness strategies 2, 1, and 6 are most frequently used. In addition, the author
also would like to offer some useful implications for effective teaching of positive
and negative politeness strategies.

iii


TABLE OF CONTENTS

*Declaration

i

*Acknowledgements

ii

*Abstract

iii

*Table of contents

iv

*List of abbreviations, tables and figures

vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1

1.Rationale

1

2.Aims of the study

2

3.Objective of the study

3

4.Scope of the study

3

5.Significance of the study

3

6.Design of the study

4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

5

1.1.Introduction

5

1.2. Theoretical background

5

1.2.1. Communicative competence

5

1.2.2. An overview of Speech act

6

iv


1.2.3. Politeness and politeness strategies

8

1.2.3.1. Politeness

8

1.2.3.2. The concept of face

9

1.2.3.3. Face threatening acts

10

1.2.3.4. Positive politeness and positive politeness strategies

13

1.2.3.5. Negative politeness and negative politeness strategies

17

1.3. Previous study

18

1.4. Summary

24

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

25

2.1.Introduction

25

2.2. Research questions

25

2.3. Research method

25

2.4. Data-related issues

25

2.4.1. Data sources

25

2.4.2. Data types to be collected

26

2.4.3. Procedure of data collection

26

2.4.4. Data analysis

27

2.5. Summary

27

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

28

3.1. Introduction

28

3.2. Findings

28

3.2.1. The use of positive and negative politenessstrategies in the

28

conversations of “Top Notch 2”(the first edition)

v

3.2.1.1. Positive politeness strategies in the conversations of the course

29

book “Top Notch 2”(the first edition)
3.2.1.2. Negative politeness strategies in the conversations of the course

38

book “Top Notch 2”(the first edition)
3.3. Implications for teaching politeness strategies in thecourse book “Top

43

Notch 2” (the first edition)
3.3.1. Implication for teaching politeness strategies

43

3.3.2. Supplementary exercises and activities for teaching politeness

44

strategies in the course book “Top Notch 2” (the first edition)
3.4. Summary

49

PART C: CONCLUSION

50

1. Introduction

50

2. Summary

50

3. Limitations of the study

51

4. Suggestions for further study

52

REFERENCES

I

APPENDIX

IV

vi

List of Abbreviations, Tables and Figures

List of abbreviations
EFL

English as a foreign language

ESL

English as a second language

S

The speaker

H

The hearer/ Addressee

FTA

Face threatening act

N.P

Negative politeness

P.P

Positive Politeness

P

Page

E.g.

For example

List of tables
Table 1: The proportion of positive and negative politeness strategies
Table 2: The proportion of positive politeness strategies
Table 3: The proportion of negative politeness strategies

List of figures
Figure 1: Circumstances determining choice of strategy

vii


PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
Language, generally speaking, is created as a necessary demand of human
life with the crucial aim of communication. Since different people from different
cultural and social backgrounds may have different ways to exchange information
and express their attitudes and opinions, the question of how to successfully
communicate in certain contexts, especially in cross-cultural communication has
attracted great attention from linguists and has been widely discussed so far. It is
commonly believed that understanding social conventions and paying attention to

such concepts as politeness and face will definitely allow us to have better
comprehension of a variety of speaking ways by people from different cultures,
thus helping eliminate ethnic stereotypes and misunderstandings. As claimed by
Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000), “when learning a second language, one needs to
acquire the new culture politeness framework, which is very different from that of
one‟s own culture”.

Obviously, students‟ master of the cultural knowledge in

general and strategies to choose the language politely in particular is supposed to
make a valuable contribution to their ability to well communicate with confidence
in any English speaking environment. With such great importance to language
competence

and

communication

skill,

politeness

strategies

are

strongly

recommended to be included in the course designs for teaching and learning English
as a second language in universities and schools.

Among popular course books for English learners, Top Notch series (with
Summit), as claimed by Pearson Longman, is an award-winning six-level
communicative course for adults and young adults. This course book series have
also been used and evaluated by a number of ESL institutes and teachers in the
world. Eslami, Esmaeli, Ghavaminia, and Rajabi (2010) chosed to evaluate the four
mostly instructed courses in Iran English language institutes namelyTop Notch,
Interchange, Headway, and On Your Markbased on Mcdounough and Shaw‟s

1


(2003) division of course book evaluation into internal and external evaluation.
After a thorough examination, the researchers came to the conclusion that“Top
Notch best meets Mcdounough and Shaw‟s (2003) evaluation criteria”.According
to the result of the study by Alemi and Mesbah (2013), the Top Notch series
offered certain benefits to language learners such as “encouraging thestudents to
communicate successfully by giving them lots of opportunities for interaction, and
demonstrating cultural-based aspects not only through lively and authentic visual
images but also without cultural bias” (Alemi&Mesbah, 2013-162).Frommy and
my colleagues ‟personal experiences as English lecturers who have been making
use of these books as text books in the official English teaching program for
students at FPT university for nearly four years, we has got deeply interested in
their effective communicative approach with the main focus on natural and
authentic communication, the promotion of integrated language- skills practice as
well as the inclusion of topical themes in interactive conversations. In order to make
better and more effective use of this course book series in teaching, the author of the
present study has had strong desire for chances of conducting anin-depth study on
these books‟ communicative approach.
All the aforementioned reasons have encouraged the researcher to work on
this study with the objectives of gaining insights into the positive and negative

politeness strategies in the conversations of the course book “Top Notch 2” by Joan
M. Saslow and Allen Ascher -the third book in the Top Notch and Summit series
introduced above.
2. Aims of the study
Firstly, the study is aimed to investigate the politeness strategies utilized in
the conversations of the course book selected. The second aim the study expected to
achieve is to provide teachers with some suggestions for the effective teaching of
polite strategies in the book “Top Notch 2” (the first edition).

2


3. Objectives of the study
In order to achieve the aims mentioned above, the objectives are specified as
follows:
-

Identifying and analyzing positive strategies employed in the conversations

of “Top Notch 2” (the first edition).
-

Identifying and analyzing negative politeness strategies employed in the

conversations of “Top Notch 2” (the first edition).
-

Offering possible implications for teaching positive and negative strategies in

an effective and efficient way with specific exercises related to the content of the

course book.
4. Scope of the study
Politeness strategies which can be presented through verbal and nonverbal
behaviors also can be expressed in different ways by different linguists. The
research is conducted with no ambition to study politeness strategies with various
approaches but it is mainly based on Brown and Levinson‟s theoretical framework.
The focus of this study is limited to investigating only the positive and negative
politeness strategies in the conversation of “Top Notch 2” (the first condition)
without paying much attention to the nonverbal ones.
5. Significance of the study
Once having been completed, this study would give decent benefits. With
respect to English communication teaching, the study is supposed to serve as
noteworthy reference for creating the suitable methods for teaching politeness
strategies in the course book “Top Notch 2”.As for English learner of this course
book, the research hopefully help not only raise the students‟ awareness of the
importance of politeness strategies in cross-cultural communication in general but
also provide them with specific knowledge of politesse strategies accompanied with
their typical words and expressions used in the course book‟s conversation as well
as related exercises and activities for their learning and practising in particular.

3


6. Design of the study report
Part A: Introduction- presents the rationale, aims, objectives, scope,
methods,significance and design of the study.
Part B: Development- consists of three chapters as follows:
Chapter 1: Theoretical background- lays the theoretical foundation for the research.
Chapter 2:

Methodology-details the methods that have been used and the

procedures that have been followed by the researcher.
Chapter 3: Findings and discussion – reports the study‟s finding on which further
discussion is offered
Part C: Conclusion: ends the study by summarizing its main points as well
as finding out the limitation and suggestions for the further studies
The following parts are references and appendix .

4


PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: Literature Review
1.1.

Introduction
This chapter aims at providing a theoretical background to the research as

well as review of previous related studies, which is necessary for and relevant to the
analysis and interpretation of data.
1.2.Theoretical background
1.2.1. Communicative competence
There have been so far various concepts of communicative competence by
language scholars of different fields. According to Hymes (1967), communicative
competence includes not only knowledge of the linguistics forms of a language but
also its social rules, knowledge of when, how and to whom it is appropriate to use
these forms.
In the context of second language teaching, Canale and Swain (1980) define

communicative competence “a synthesis of knowledge of basic grammatical
principles, knowledge of how language is used in social settings to perform
communicative functions, and knowledge of how utterances and communicative
functions can be combined according to the principles of discourse”. Specifically,
they prescribe this term into four components:
 Grammatical competence: reflects the knowledge of the lexicon, syntax and
semantics, or words and rules in general.
 Sociolinguistic competence: refers to the appropriateness of communication
depending on the context including the participants and the rules of
interaction.
 Discourse competence:involves the cohesion and coherence of utterances in
a discourse or cohesion and coherence in general.

5


 Strategic competence： is concerned with the appropriate use of
communication strategies especially when communication fails.
In the concept of communicative competence by Savignon (1972), much greater
emphasis is placed on the aspect of ability when she regards communicative
competence as “the ability to function in a truly communicative setting – that is, in a
dynamic exchange in which linguistic competence must adapt itself to the total
informational input, both linguistic and paralinguistic, of one or more interlocutors”
(Savignon, 1972:8). Likewise, Spitzberg (1988) also defines communication
competence as "the ability to interact well with others" (p.68). In his explanation,
"the term 'well' refers to accuracy, clarity, comprehensibility, coherence, expertise,
effectiveness and appropriateness" (p. 68).
As the significant role of communicative competence is undeniable, Wardhaugh
(1989: 213) recommends that “when we teach a language like English to speakers
who already know another language, we must be aware that we have to teach more

than new sounds, words, and grammatical structure”. In fact, communicative
competence achievement requires not only language users‟ linguistics knowledge
but also their interaction skills as well as social and cultural knowledge about how
and when to use utterances appropriately. Actually, the notion of social
acceptability and the correct use of language depend on what we understand of the
norms of behavior in the target language. The differences in accepted norms of
behavior are generally reflected in speech acts which in fact can be “not
comparable across cultures” as concluded by Schmidt and Richards (1980). In
more details, the concept of speech act is briefly reviewed in the next part as
follows.
1.2.2. An overview of Speech act
Having been first mentioned by J.L. Austin in his book “How to do things
with words” published in 1962, the notion of speech act have considered among the
most important subject in the field of language use. It also has been further studied

6


and developed in a number of research by famous theorists and linguists namely
Hymes (1964), Searle (1969, 1975), Levinson (1997), Yule (1996) etc., most of
whom share the common belief that when a speaker says something, he does
something at the same time.
As stated by Austin (1962), a speech act is an utterance that serves a function in
communication. He believes that in uttering a sentence we can do things as well say
things. From the viewpoint of Searle (1969:24), language is part of a theory of
action and speech acts are those verbal actions like promising, threatening, and
requesting that one performs in speaking.
Likewise, according to Yule (1996:47), in English, as any other language, some
actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts; these actions are
given labels such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, or

request. More specifically, Zierhofer (2002) claims that speech acts are commonly
taken to include such acts as promising, offering, explaining, ordering, greeting,
accepting, warning, demanding, advertising, canceling, inviting, withdrawing,
declaring, judging, criticizing, describing, and congratulating.
In the theory of Austin (1962), a speech act consists of three dimensions below:
i.

Locutionary act: The actions performed by uttering a well-formed,
meaningful sentence.

ii.

Illocutionary act: The communication force which accompanies the
utterance. E.g. promising, warning, conceding, denying, etc.

iii.

Perlocutionary act: The effect of the utterance on the hearer who may feel
amused, persuaded, warned.
(Austin, 1962, cited in Hatim& Mason 1990: 59)
Among the three above-mentioned acts, speech act theory tends to mainly

focus on illocutionary acts, which may explain the reason why discussions about the
classification of speech acts actually center on the classification of illocutionary

7


acts. So far there is a large number of speech acts in English and various attempts
have been made to classify them. One of the most widely used classifications is

offered by Searle (1976) as follows:
i.

Representative: commits the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition
(paradigm cases: asserting, concluding).

ii.

Directives: are attempts by the speaker to get the Addressee to do something
(paradigm cases: requesting, questioning).

iii.

Commissives commit the speaker to some future course of action (paradigm
cases: promising, threatening, offering).

iv.

Expressives express a psychological state (paradigm cases: thanking,
apologizing, welcoming, congratulating).

v.

Declarations affect the immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs
and which tend to rely on elaborate extra-linguistic institutions (paradigm
cases: excommunicating, declaring war, christening, marrying, firing from
employment).
(Searle, 1976: 10-16 cited in Finch, 2000: 182)

On the whole it is recommended that learners of English must be made consciously

aware of the differences in certain speech acts in specific cultural context since the
values and cultural norms underlying the English language used by ESL leaners are
not necessarily the same as those of native speakers. Also ESL learners are advised
to acquire necessaryknowledge of the use of politeness strategies in performing
certain speech acts in cross-cultural communication. In the next part, a thorough
review of politeness and politeness strategies is offered as follows.
1.2.3. Politeness and politeness strategies
1.2.3.1.

Politeness

8


Being

regarded

as

one

of

the

most

significant

aspects

of

humancommunication, politeness has been given particular attention and interest
from a huge number of scholars researchers.
Basically, “politeness is interpreted as a strategy (or series or strategies) by a
speaker to achieve a variety of goals such as promoting or maintaining harmonious
relation” (Thomas, 1995:157). From the linguistic view of Blum-Kulla (1987:131),
politeness is considered “the interactional balance achieved between two needs: the
need for pragmatic clarity and the need to avoid coerciveness”.
Culturally speaking, Yule (1996) views politeness as “the means employed to show
awareness of another person‟s face”… and as “the idea of polite social behavior”
or “etiquette, within a culture”.According to Lakoff, politenessis “a system of
interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential
for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange” (Lakoff , 1990:34
, cited in Eelen , 2001:2).
Among the well-known theories of politeness is the one proposed by Brown and
Levinson (1987) which studies politeness as strategies employed by the speakers to
obtain or to save “face”.Since this study will be mainly based on the theory put
forward by Brown and Levinson for further discussion, the following part‟s focus is
on presenting an in-depth review of the most influential concepts of their model
only.
1.2.3.2.

The concept of face

Among the first scholars whose studies are concerned with the notion of
face, Goffman in his article “On Face Work” views “face” as in the following:
The term face maybe defined as the positive social value a person

effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken
during a particular contact. Face is an image of self-delineated in
terms of approved social attributes.

9


(Goffman ,1955:213)
Goffman‟s face concept is also believed to provide the basis for Brow and
Levinson‟s theory of politeness, in which face is said to refer to “something that is
emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be
constantly attended to in interaction” (Brown and Levinson, 1978:66).
Quite similarly, Yule (1996) defines face as “the public self-image of a person. It
refers to that emotionally and social sense of self that everyone has and expect
everyone else to recognized”.
Regarding the main aspects of face, Yule also shares Goffman‟s idea on the
classification of face into two categories, that is, positive face and negative face. An
individual‟s positive face, as stated by Yule (1996), is “the need to be accepted,
even liked, by others, to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that
his or her wants are shared by others”. Meanwhile, a person‟s negative face is
presented by “the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be
imposed on by the others”.
According to Brow and Levinson (1987), positive face represents “the positive selfimage that people have and want to be appreciated and approved by at least some
people” (1987:61). Negative face, on the other hand, describes “the basic claim to
territories, personal preserves, right to non-distraction, i.e. to freedom of action
and freedom from imposition”. In other words, the negative face “is reflected in the
desire not to be impeded or put upon, to have the freedom to act as one chooses”
(Thomas, 1995:169). The existence of positive and negative face wants can be
found in almost every culture and society; yet it is the emphasis on one of these two
aspects of face that may differ in different cultures.

1.2.3.3.

Face-threatening acts

From the viewpoint of Brown and Levinson, certain illocutionary acts can
have the potential of threatening another person‟s face, which are termed face
threatening acts (FTAs). Specifically, if an individual says something that tends to

10


threat or damage another one‟s expectation regarding self-image, he is said to have
performed an FTA. Brown and Levinson (1987: 65-68) also claim that facethreatening acts may threaten either the speaker's face or the hearer's face, and they
may threaten either their positive face or negative face. In more details, they offer
the important distinction of kinds of FTAs as follows:
 FTAs threatening the positive-face want
 FTAs threatening the positive –face of the addressee
Specific acts which can threaten the hearer‟s positive-face are listed below:
(i)

Those that show that the speaker has a negative evaluation of some aspect of

the

hearer‟s positive face, for example, by disapproving, criticizing, complaining
insulting or disagreeing, etc.

(ii)

Those that show that the speaker doesn‟t care about (or is indifferent to) the

addressee‟s positive face, such as expressions of violent (out-of control)
emotions, bringing a bad news about the addressee, or good news (boasting)
about the speaker, raising of dangerously emotional or divisive topics, etc.
 FTAs threatening the positive –face of the speaker
Apart from threatening the positive face of the hearer, those FTAs might also
damage that of speaker with the utterances of apologies, acceptance of a
compliment, breakdown of physical control over body, self-humiliation,
confessions, or emotion leakage, etc.

 FTAs threatening the negative-face want
 FTAs threatening the negative –face of the addressee
Another classification given by Brown and Levinson to FTAs is the acts
threatening the negative-face want of the hearer by indicating that the
speaker does not respect the hearer‟s freedom of action and thought. Among
these, Brown and Levinson point out three main dimensions below:
(i)

Those that anticipate some action of the addressee, whereby the speaker puts
pressure on the hearer to do or not to do something, for instance: orders and
requests, suggestions and advice, reminding, threats, warnings, dares, etc.

11


(ii)

Those that anticipate some action of the speaker, whereby he puts pressure
onthe addressee to accept or reject some kind of debt, like offers, promises.

(iii)

Those that anticipate some desire of the speaker regarding the addressee,
whereby he puts pressure on the hearer to take action in order to protect or
contribute to the speaker‟s wants, such as compliments, expressions of envy
or admiration or expressions of strong emotions toward the addressee.
 FTAs threatening the negative –face of the speaker
Not only may those acts threaten the addressee‟s negative face as mentioned
above, but also they are likely to threaten the speaker‟s with the expression
of thanks, recognition of thanks or apologies, excuses, acceptance of offers,
etc.

In order to minimize risk of losing face, a set of five strategies is suggested by the
two authors as in the following figure:
Lesser risk to face
Estimation of
risk of face loss

On record

1. Without redressive
action, badly

Do the FTA
5. Don‟t do
the FTA

4. Off
record

With

redressive
action

Greater risk to face

2. Positive
Politeness
3. Negative
Politeness

Figure 1: Circumstances determining choice of strategy
(Brown and Levinson, 1987:69)
The features of each strategy are briefly summarized by Behm (2008) as follows:
1. Do the FTAs on record and badly (without redress): this strategy involves
direct and unambiguous utterances without out any particular politeness
strategy.

12


2. Do the FTAs on record and with redress by using positive politeness
strategy: This strategy focuses on saving the hearer‟s positive face and
involves the expression of camaraderie, positive feelings and empathy
3. Do the FTAs on record and with redress by using negative politeness
strategy: this strategy attends to the hearer‟s negative face and includes the
expression of regret for interference or interruption as well as expression of
apologies in order to show respect to the addressee‟s time or concerns
4. Do the FTAs by using off-record politeness- this strategy is performed by
hinting and being vague (e.g. using irony, metaphors or rhetorical questions)
instead of directly stating a message

5. Don‟t do the FTAs- this strategy seeks to avoid a face threat at all.
(Behm, 2008:10-11)
As the research is particularly aimed at studying the positive and negative politeness
strategies, they will be presented in details in the following sections.
1.2.3.4.

Positive politeness and positive politeness strategies

As proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987:101), positive politeness is
“redress directed to the addressee‟s face, his perennial desire that his wants (or the
actions/ acquisitions/values resulting from them) should be thought of as
desirable”. In other words, positive politeness is used to satisfy the positive face
of the hearer by approving or including him as a friend or as a member in a group.
Correspondingly, itis said that in many cases, actual positive politeness strategies
are positive approaches to the addressee‟s positive face rather the redress‟s.
According to Nguyen Quang (2003), “positive politeness is any
communicativeact (verbal and/or non-verbal) which is intentionally and
appropriately meant to show the speaker‟s concern to the hearer, thus enhancing
the sense of solidarity between them”.

13


From the viewpoint of Yule (1996:64), a positive politeness strategy “leads
the requester to inquire for a common goal, and even friendship”. This type of
politeness strategy can be seen as a “solidarity strategy” since it tends to be
employed not only to redress the FTA, but also to indicate that people in the given
contexts know each other quite well and the speaker wants to minimize the distance
as well as enhance the sense of solidarity between them.
To specify the types of positive politeness strategy, Brown and Levinson

(1987: 101-129) offer the list of fifteen sub-strategies as seen below:
 Strategy 1: -Notice, attend to H (her/his interest, wants, needs, goods, etc…)
This strategy generally suggests the speaker should pay attention to aspects of
the hearer‟s conditions, for example, his/her noticeable change, remarkable
possession or anything that hearer wants speaker to notice and approve of it.
E.g.: You must be hungry. How about some lunch?
 Strategy 2: -Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)
This strategy often occurs with exaggerated intonation, stress and other aspects
of prosodic as well as intensifying modifiers.
E.g.: How absolutely marvelous/extraordinary/devastating/incredible!
 Strategy 3:- Intensify interest to H
Another way for the speaker to communicate to the addressee that the shares
some of his wants is to intensify the interest of the speaker contributions by
“making a good story” and drawing the hearer as a participant into the
conversation with direct questions and expressions like „you know‟, „ guess
what‟ or exaggerating facts to overstate.
E.g: I have just met our old neighbor, you know what, he‟s a millionaire now.
 Strategy 4:- Use in- group identify markers
This strategy is often done with the usage of the certain ways to express ingroup membership, such as address forms, in- group language or dialect, jargon
or slang and ellipses.

14


E.g.: Come here, honey.
 Strategy 5:- Seek agreement
With this strategy, the speaker seeks ways in which it is possible to agree with
the hearer, such as by raising safe topic, using repetition or making use of
minimalencouragers like „yes‟, „uhuh‟, „really‟, etc.
E.g: - She is going to New York this week.

- To New York!


Strategy 6:- Avoid disagreement
Several different ways can be employed to help avoid disagreement between the
speaker and the hearer in communication, such as the use of token-agreement,
pseudo -agreement, white lie andhedging opinions.
E.g.: -What is she, small?
- Yes, yes, she‟s small, smallish, um not really small but certainly not very
big

 Strategy 7:-Presuppose/ Raise/ Assert common ground
This strategy is concerned with gossip, small talk, and personal center switch,
time switch, and place switch, avoidance of adjustment of reports to hearer‟s
point of view, presupposition of knowledge of hearer‟s relationship, wants and
attitudes.
E.g.: I went there alone, you know, it‟s my first night out in such a scary jungle.
 Strategy 8: -Joke
These kinds of jokes are usually made based on mutual shared background
andvalues with the aim to putting hearer at ease or minimizing an FTA of
requesting.
E.g: How about lending me this old heap of junk? (the hearer‟s new Cadillac)
 Strategy 9: -Assert or presuppose S‟s knowledge of or concern for H‟s wants
This strategy is considered the way to indicate cooperation and thus potentially
to put pressure on the addressee to cooperate with the speaker as well as to

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assert or imply knowledge of the addressee‟s wants and willingness to fit one‟s

own wants in with them.
E.g.: I know you like to wear your favorite color blue, but why don‟t you try on
this green shirt, that may look good on you.
 Strategy 10: -Offer/ promise
The occurrence of this strategy can be found in the context when the speaker
wants to show his good intentions in satisfying the hearer‟s positive face wants
and claim that he/she will help the hearer obtain the hearer‟s wants or desires.
E.g: Don‟t worry, I‟ll come and talk to your Mom about it.
 Strategy 11: -Be optimistic
It is another kind of cooperative strategy for the speaker to assume that the
addressee wants the speaker‟s wants for the speaker (or for the speaker and
hearer) and will help him to obtain. Presumptuous or „optimistic‟ expressions of
FTAs are one outcome of this strategy.
E.g.: You will lend me your book, won‟t you?


Strategy 12: - Include both S and H in the activity
By using inclusive forms like „we‟, „us‟, „let‟s‟, the speaker actually want to
show that the speaker and hearer are cooperators and the speaker wants the
hearer to cooperate with him in taking some actions.
E.g.: Let‟s stop for a drink, ok?

 Strategy 13: -Give (or ask for) reasons
With this strategy, the speaker gives reason to why he wants what he wants and
assumes (via optimism) that if there are no good reasons why the hearer
shouldn‟t or can‟t cooperate, he will.
E.g.: Why don‟t you help me with my ironing?
 Strategy 14: -Assume or assert reciprocity
Giving evidence of habit or obligations obtained between the speaker and
hearer might claim the existence of their cooperation.

E.g: If you help me finish this project, I will give you my book.

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