Social Class as a Predictor of Politeness Strategies Use in L1 and L2 Speech Act Production

Many linguistic, paralinguistic, and metalinguistic issues have undergone research in light of social class since Bernstein’s (1958) preliminary assertions on the association of language patterns and social class status. However, little research has been conducted to investigate whether L1 and L2 politeness strategies use can be predicted by social class variables. To fill this gap, a group of Iranian EFL learners were administered (a) a social class questionnaire measuring the educational, behavioral, and economic aspects of their social class status, and (b) Persian and English discourse completion tasks (DCTs) including nine scenarios for the three face-threatening speech acts of request, complaint, and disagreement. The analysis of DCTs showed that negative and positive politeness strategies in both L1 and L2 were the most common strategies. On the contrary, off-record politeness strategies were rarely used. A total make-up of similarities was found between L1 and L2 in the frequency of politeness strategies in the three face-threatening speech acts. The results of regression analysis showed that educational and behavioral social class variables were strong and weak predictors of L1 and L2 politeness strategies use, respectively. However, the economic aspect of social class did not significantly predict L1 and L2 politeness strategies use. It can be concluded from the findings that social class must be considered as a critical driving force in speech act production.