(Im)Politeness Strategies in Iranian EFL Classes: Use of Discourse Markers

The present study aimed to investigate the EFL learners’ and teachers’ use of Discourse Markers (DMs) as hedging devices to soften the force of commands in (im)polite situations. To this end, 320 EFL learners (i.e., 164 females and 156 males) at the intermediate and advanced levels of language proficiency and 20 EFL teachers (i.e., 10 males and 10 females) participated in the current research. A questionnaire with seven scenarios was developed each consisting of two sentences: one including a DM and one with no DM. It, also, included a self-assessment report of English Competence (Dewi, 2011). The questionnaire was distributed among both the learners and teachers. The results revealed that both proficiency level and gender had a significant influence on EFL learners’ and teachers’ use of DMs. Female learners and teachers were more polite as they used DMs more frequently. The findings also demonstrated that advanced learners utilized more DMs than their intermediate counterparts. Also, EFL teachers significantly surpassed both groups of learners in employing DMs. The findings offer implications for EFL practitioners and material designers.

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