Politeness in Practice: Exploring Cultural Norms in Romanian Language Learning

Abstract

Politeness shapes interpersonal dynamics and mastering its norms is crucial for engaging in effective and meaningful interactions within a linguistic community. Hence, integrating politeness strategies into language teaching involves navigating cultural differences and contextual subtleties, in a process aimed at reframing linguistic behaviour. Teaching politeness is documented to enhance language proficiency and cultural competence, suggesting the importance of immersive language experiences and authentic communicative exchanges. This study investigates how Romanian language learners at different proficiency levels politeness in their communication, by employing discourse completion tasks, and analyses the results according to Brown and Levinson’s theoretical framework. The results indicate that higher proficiency students exhibit a more nuanced comprehension of politeness and tend to employ negative politeness more often in formal situations and positive politeness in informal ones. Additionally, the study sheds light on two opposing tendencies of non-native speakers of Romanian: the inclination to overuse politeness markers or to skip them entirely, both pointing to the need to enhance pragmalinguistic skills.