A matter of politeness? On the role of face-threatening acts in online tutoring.

Linnemann G, Brummernhenrich B, Jucks R

Abstract

Social media, and computer-mediated communication in general, gain impact on many areas of everyday life, such as learning. An effective form of learning, which can be easily realised through online communication, is tutoring. Tutoring, however, seems to be influenced by polite communication. Based on dialogue sequences retrieved from naturalistic peer-tutoring in a chat setting, we conducted a study in which we let potential addressees of these messages rate their perceptions of the tutors’ face work, communication style, credibility, comprehensibility and likeability. Following Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory on politeness, we varied two expressions of politeness, bald/on record and negative politeness. We predicted a higher outcome for negative politeness regarding all dependent variables except comprehensibility, which we predicted to be higher in baldly uttered segments. Overall, results showed positive effects of face work on recipients’ perceptions. However, comprehensibility revealed effects only for conciseness and additional stimulation, with the latter being higher in the negative politeness condition.