Building up Learners' Communicative Competence: the Politeness Principle

Abstract

Learners of a second language may succeed in acquiring the linguistic competence of that language. However, the communicative competence is more important in social interaction with native speakers. Therefore, many principles are postulated for building up learners’ communicative competence such as: the Cooperative Principle, the Politeness Principle and the Irony Principle (Leech, 1983). This paper will focus on one of these principles, i.e. the Politeness Principle and intends to answer the following questions:1.What is the Politeness Principle?2.What are the maxims and sub-maxims of the Politeness Principle?3.What is the relation between indirectness and politeness? Moreover, the Politeness Principle, together with its maxims and sub-maxims, will be applied to Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1894) to signify its role and importance in real life and to show how it works in face-to-face interaction. The paper concludes that the Politeness Principle is essential for learners to interpret indirect utterances in natural communication and dramatic dialogue, as well.