Aspects of Politeness in a Classroom of English as a Second Language

This thesis deals with politeness and its realization in a classroom discourse. The theoretical part describes the most influential politeness theories and also the findings on the topic of teaching pragmatics and linguistic politeness. The research in the thesis focuses on analysis of teachers' verbal realizations of politeness as found in the recordings of four English lessons. The research was designed to verify the two hypotheses: (1) teachers are basically polite in a classroom of English as a second language and (2) politeness strategies of Czech teachers of English differ from those of native speaking teachers. The analytical part adopts the viewpoint of Brown and Levinson's positive and negative politeness. The last part of the thesis aims at summarizing the implications that this thesis, its theoretical summary and its research, have for teaching English as a second language