Phatic utterances as face-threatening/saving acts or politeness strategies: a pragmatic reflection for their teaching in the L2 class

The (im)politeness of some linguistic expressions is one of the major concerns of teachers and students in the L2 class. Based on the face-saving approach (Brown and Levinson 1987), some teachers tell their students that using or avoiding phatic utterances may automatically have negative or positive consequences for social interaction because they assign to these utterances or to their avoidance a default value. Therefore, the aim of this paper will be to discuss when and why some phatic utterances may damage or favour social interaction in order to draw some implications for their teaching in the L2 class.

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