The acquisition of politeness strategies in Lithuanian

Acquisition of politeness is an integral part of communicative competence as it reveals when children are able to reach their communicative goals effectively by differentiating linguistic expressions according to situation and interlocutor they are speaking to. In this paper expressions and development of linguistic politeness in Lithuanian are analyzed. So far, the acquisition of politeness in Lithuanian have been studied only little, thus the present investigation contributes to politeness studies. The main aim of this paper is to discuss the results of a pilot study while applying role-play method to elicit expressions of politeness in the speech of 4–7 years old Lithuanian children. A small group of children were asked to play with each other in the kindergarten setting according to given social situation, which varied according to several variables: social status and social distance of the interlocutors. The role-play contained well known social situations, such as a visit to the doctor, café, shop, school, family’s everyday life and birthday celebration. Children’s conversations were recorded and transcribed. The utterances were coded for politeness markers, e.g., politeness phrases, direct and indirect requests, mitigating devices, additionally, other remarks were included. In all the investigated age groups stylistic variation was observed. The main finding show that children used an informal register when negotiated game plot, whereas a formal register with more politeness markers was introduced when acting in the specific role. The results are discussed and analyzed in relation to children’s ageHumanitarinių mokslų fakultetasVytauto Didžiojo universiteta