Politeness in Request Speech Acts by Korean EFL Speakers

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pragmatic characteristics of politeness in request speech acts in English by Korean speakers of English as a foreign language. The main focus is particularly placed on describing how the use of politeness strategies varies according to three sociolinguistic variables: the social distance, the social power and the difficulty to request. The findings show that there are some differences worth noting between two groups in realization of request speech acts in informal situations due to linguistic and cultural difference. In conclusion, politeness competence is an integral and important component of overall language competence. Not only the linguistic politeness features but also how to use them appropriately in a given situation should be taught in English classroom, just as some of the phonetic and structural aspects of language can be taught.