Iranian EFL Learners’ Awareness of (Im)politeness Strategies in English

The present study examined the different levels of (im)politeness strategies in expressing request, apology, and refusal speech acts across intermediate and advanced Iranian EFL learners to identify their attitudinal ratings of their produced structures in terms of pragmatic success and (im)politeness mannerism. A discourse completion test including 2 Likert scales on attitudinal appropriateness and an(im)politeness mannerism test for every item was distributed among 110 participants (10 native and 100 nonnative English speakers), engaging them in addressing the speech acts to interlocutors of lower, equal, and higher social statuses with intimate or strange distance. Results indicated that despite having a high command of English, the learners showed deficiencies in the use of (im)politenessstrategies that may call for the inclusion of such strategies in EFL instruction programs.