Teaching politeness: ESL/EFL and JSL/JFL teachers ... - PAAL Japan

Proceedings of the 17th Conference of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics 

Teaching politeness: ESL/EFL and JSL/JFL teachers’ attitudes 

in comparative perspective 

Kiyomi Fujii and Etsuko Inoguchi 

Academic Foundation Program, Kanazawa Institute of Technology 

kfujii@neptune.kanazawa-it.ac.jp, etsuko@neptune.kanazawa-it.ac.jp 

Abstract 

This study reports on the differences between 

ESL/EFL teachers and JSL/JFL teachers’ teaching 

of politeness and politeness expressions. 

The authors of the present study investigated 

how JSL/JFL and EFL/ESL teachers teach 

‘politeness,’ and their respective attitudes toward 

teaching politeness. JSL/JFL teachers exhibit a high 

awareness of politeness usage and explicitly 

incorporate cultural aspects when teaching 

linguistic structures. On the other hand, ESL/EFL 

teachers tend to focus more on content rather than 

explicit teaching of politeness expression, even 

though they are aware of its importance. 

Based on preliminary research, the authors 

conducted further research that included interviews 

with the participants. The results show that 

teachers’ respective backgrounds affect the 

classroom instruction as well as expectations of 

student performance. 

Keywords 

ESL/SFL, JSL/JFL, Politeness, Teaching attitude 

Introduction 

There are many ways to show politeness, including 

non-verbal behavior, such as bowing, and verbal 

behavior, such as tone of voice, pausing, speech rate, 

and language expressions. There is also the 

consideration of social customs. Each society and 

culture has a different way of showing politeness. 

Japanese honorifics and politeness pose one of the 

greatest challenges for learners of Japanese. 

Because of this, much research has been conducted 

in the area of politeness in language teaching, 

especially featuring learners of Japanese and 

politeness expressions including honorifics and 

socio-cultural competences. A number of studies 

illustrate the difficulty of sociolinguistic and 

sociocultural feature acquisition in a classroom 

environment (Tateyama, 2001). JSL/JFL textbooks 

teach politeness strategies explicitly. Nevertheless, 

the acquisition of pragmatic competency has proved 

difficult even with explicit instruction (Cook, 

2001). 

Instruction in politeness was one of the things 

the authors noticed about English pedagogy in 

Japan. To be specific, our own English study 

experiences, and observation of English teaching in 

Japan since returning to Japan, led us to believe that 

politeness may not be explicitly provided in 

textbooks. This raised the question of how English 

textbooks compared to Japanese language textbooks. 

In an analysis of English language textbooks, Arai 

(2005) found that although English (ESL/EFL) 

textbooks published in Japan have slightly more 

content than those published in the US or the UK, 

politeness strategies were not introduced as a 

textbook topic. Arai suggested that textbooks 

should pay more attention to politeness strategies 

and explicitly include politeness strategies as a 

topic. Oyama, Morikawa, and Johnson (2009) 

found that Japanese EFL/ESL learners, while 

conscious of the need to use politeness strategies, 

do not know how to express higher levels of 

politeness. However, the acquisition of politeness is 

quite difficult for JSL/JFL learners and requires 

increasing sociocultural competence. 

For the above reasons, the present study will 

also discuss questions of how language teachers can 

address this issue and enhance their pedagogic 

approach. 

1 Methodology 

1.1 Participants 

Participants are ten English teachers who were born 

and raised in the US, and ten Japanese teachers who 

were born and raised in Japan. All the English 

teachers are native speakers of English, and 

Japanese teachers are Japanese native speakers. The 

ages of the participants range from early thirties to 

early fifties, and the time they spent in 

English-speaking countries, or in Japan, varies from 

person to person. All the participants teach at the 

college level. 

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Proceedings of the 17th Conference of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics 

1.2 Procedure 

The participants were asked to fill out a 

questionnaire and observed some of the Japanese 

and English classes. The questionnaire directly 

asked whether they explicitly teach ‘politeness’ in 

class. Also, the participants were asked to write 

what kind of expressions they would teach in 

certain situations where negative or positive 

politeness is required. Additionally, the participants 

were asked to write any linguistic or cultural 

information they would provide to the class in order 

to teach the expressions. 

2 Results 

2.1 Teaching politeness in class 

Five out of 10 ESL/EFL teachers said that they do 

not teach politeness, since they teach content rather 

than etiquette. One ESL/EFL teacher noted that if 

s/he were to teach business English, s/he would 

emphasize the importance of polite usage. JSL/JFL 

teachers answered unanimously that they teach 

politeness in all classes at all levels, but especially, 

at the advanced levels. 

2.2 Positive and negative politeness 

The results show the participants teach the 

following situations in which negative politeness is 

required. When teaching a request form, JSL/JFL 

teachers answered that they would teach 

“teitadakemasenka,” using a negative politeness 

strategy. On the other hand, ESL/EFL teachers 

suggested the use of “may/could I” or “would you 

mind if,” indicating that they distinguish the forms 

depending on the burden of the request itself. 

Japanese teachers exhibit more standardization with 

their use of “teitadakaku,” since the status 

difference (e.g. teacher-student) is the most 

important factor in making a request. 

Certain situations, however, require positive 

politeness, such as students greeting a teacher, or 

establishing rapport with the teacher. When a 

student responds to a compliment by a teacher, such 

as, “your dress is so nice,” or “you speak 

English/Japanese very well,” JSL/JFL teachers 

answered that the students should negate the 

compliment, whereas ESL/EFL teachers answered 

that it was acceptable to acknowledge it. 

Additionally, several ESL/EFL teachers commented 

that it was more polite to talk about the item that is 

complimented. 

JSL/JFL teachers focus on the rigid 

teacher-student relationship and believe that it is 

important to teach Japanese customs in order for 

students to adapt to Japanese culture, whereas 

ESL/EFL teachers’ answers varied. Some ESL/EFL 

teachers commented that they would make clear 

that even in the US a hierarchical teacher-student 

relationship does exist, along with the requisite 

rules. Some noted that use of the first name is 

acceptable in class, because it indicates that 

students take the initiative to communicate and 

want to create a better class atmosphere. The use of 

“konnichiwa” in an e-mail message did bother 

JSL/JFL teachers, but 3 participants said that they 

would not correct it, because the time lag makes 

such corrective feedback impractical. ESL/EFL 

teachers answered that due to the informal nature of 

the e-mail, with the delivery of the message being 

most important, they were not bothered by the use 

of “Hi!” These teachers stressed maintaining a good 

relationship with students rather than correcting 

them, which indicates that ESL/EFL teachers 

wanting to save the students’ “face.” 

3 Pedagogical suggestions 

Based on the findings of the current research, a 

suggesting can be made that ESL/EFL teachers 

should incorporate ideas of politeness into their 

curriculum. Because politeness strategies are 

difficult to convey without explicit instruction, and 

because English teachers rarely teach politeness 

outside of business English, Japanese students lack 

the opportunity to talk politely with English 

speakers. It follows that they may encounter 

difficulties communicating in English-speaking 

countries. We submit that teaching politeness 

strategies—positive and negative—would prove 

effective for Japanese speakers, who are generally 

exposed to a limited amount of politeness 

instruction (usually of the positive variety) in the 

classroom. 

References 

Arai, T. (2005). Teaching politeness in lower 

secondary schools in Japan: Text Analysis 

of politeness. Proceedings of the 10 th 

conference of Pan-pacific association of 

applied linguistics, 15-30. 

Cook, H. M. (2001). Why can’t learners of JFL 

distinguish polite from impolite speech 

styles? In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.) 

Pragmatics in language teaching, (pp. 

80-102). Cambridge: CUP. 

Oyama, N. Morikawa, S, and Johnson, K. (2009). 

Investigation of the use of politeness 

strategies by Japanese students when 

requesting in English. Gengobunkaronso, 3, 

91-103. 

Tateyama, Y. (2001). Explicit and implicit teaching 

of pragmatic routines: Japanese sumimasen. 

In K. R. Rose and G. Kasper (Eds.). 

Pragmatics in language teaching, (pp. 

200-222). Cambridge: CUP. 

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Teaching politeness: ESL/EFL and JSL/JFL teachers ... - PAAL Japan

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