| dc.description.abstract | This paper examines the politeness theory in the light of Austin & Searle’s speech act theory as reflected in CMC between
students and their lecturers or supervisors. Thus politeness aspects were analyzed as enacted in the five categories such as:
Assertives, commisives, directives, expressives, and declaratives. The paper also examined politeness in other language aspects
that are usually present in any form of communication, such as: Address phrases, meeting requests, request for reply, and
adjunct phrases. The objective of this article was to shed light on the politeness strategies employed by the lecturers and
students in their e-communication through Whatsapp and SMS (short messages or text messages) platforms. Fifty
communications were downloaded from the lecturers’ phones through their permission and the students’, which were used as
data for this study. Five lecturers and seven postgraduate students made the population of this study. The findings indicated
that students seem to be comfortable using this mode of communication, and it is important to understand how students and
lecturers make choices and how these choices affect the perception of the cultural appropriateness of CMCs. The results also
revealed that elements of politeness greatly decrease in the follow-up messages, that is, messages that require some kind of
response. From the study, lecturers adhered to formal language use as compared to the students in their communication. | en_US |
