Politeness Strategy Use and Dynamics of Dominance in College ESL Writing Tutorials:Building Social Relationships in the Non-Writing Discourse Frame

Abstract

This preliminary case study explores the dynamics in participation structure co-constructed by one female Korean Non-Native speaker (NNS) teacher and three female Chinese NNS students with the use of politeness strategies in non-writing tutorial interactions in a college English as a Second Language (ESL) writing classroom. 30-minute course-embedded individual writing tutorial interactions were audio-video recorded and transcribed for discourse analysis. The results revealed that the teacher and each student strategically used positive and negative politeness strategies to build social relationships through non-writing tutorial interactions. Compliments and common ground sharing were used as primary positive politeness strategies, while hedge, silence, and personal-point-of-view disclaimers were frequently used as negative politeness strategies. The reciprocal power equilibrium achieved by the dynamics of participation structure expectedly sheds a new light on the studies on L2 writing tutorials.