Politeness strategies in twitter updates of female English language studies Malaysian undergraduates

Twitter is now developing as a rich research site for scholars who studied online interaction, information dissemination and other plethora of subjects. Taking on this new development, this paper aims to contribute to the field of politeness and English language studies in computer-mediated commun...

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Main Authors: Marlyna Maros, Liyana Rosli
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2017
Online Access:http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11166/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11166/1/16103-49557-1-PB.pdf
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author Marlyna Maros,
Liyana Rosli,
author_facet Marlyna Maros,
Liyana Rosli,
author_sort Marlyna Maros,
building UKM Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Twitter is now developing as a rich research site for scholars who studied online interaction, information dissemination and other plethora of subjects. Taking on this new development, this paper aims to contribute to the field of politeness and English language studies in computer-mediated communication (CMC) by showcasing the politeness strategies in Twitter updates and by predicting how the tweets could potentially misfire. A total of 776 tweet updates produced by 9 female undergraduates, active users of Twitter within two months, were documented and open-ended questionnaire responses were collected for in-depth findings. The data were analysed using Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Strategies. The findings show that the participants employed four politeness strategies with positive politeness employed the most, followed by bald-on record, off-record with the least employed being negative politeness. Positive politeness is believed to be used the most because of the nature of CMC which promotes interpersonal communication and expression among its users. Although the participants employed all four politeness strategies, it is important to be aware that misunderstanding could still easily occur due to the absence of other communication cues in virtual ‘faceless’ communication. Hence, this study showed that the overuse of profanity, ambiguous indirect strategy and failure to comply with the 140-character limits in Twitter are some of the reasons that might cause misfire to happen.
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spelling oai:generic.eprints.org:111662017-12-23T03:59:26Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11166/ Politeness strategies in twitter updates of female English language studies Malaysian undergraduates Marlyna Maros, Liyana Rosli, Twitter is now developing as a rich research site for scholars who studied online interaction, information dissemination and other plethora of subjects. Taking on this new development, this paper aims to contribute to the field of politeness and English language studies in computer-mediated communication (CMC) by showcasing the politeness strategies in Twitter updates and by predicting how the tweets could potentially misfire. A total of 776 tweet updates produced by 9 female undergraduates, active users of Twitter within two months, were documented and open-ended questionnaire responses were collected for in-depth findings. The data were analysed using Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Strategies. The findings show that the participants employed four politeness strategies with positive politeness employed the most, followed by bald-on record, off-record with the least employed being negative politeness. Positive politeness is believed to be used the most because of the nature of CMC which promotes interpersonal communication and expression among its users. Although the participants employed all four politeness strategies, it is important to be aware that misunderstanding could still easily occur due to the absence of other communication cues in virtual ‘faceless’ communication. Hence, this study showed that the overuse of profanity, ambiguous indirect strategy and failure to comply with the 140-character limits in Twitter are some of the reasons that might cause misfire to happen. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2017 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11166/1/16103-49557-1-PB.pdf Marlyna Maros, and Liyana Rosli, (2017) Politeness strategies in twitter updates of female English language studies Malaysian undergraduates. 3L; Language,Linguistics and Literature,The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies., 23 (1). pp. 132-149. ISSN 0128-5157 http://ejournal.ukm.my/3l/issue/view/904
spellingShingle Marlyna Maros,
Liyana Rosli,
Politeness strategies in twitter updates of female English language studies Malaysian undergraduates
title Politeness strategies in twitter updates of female English language studies Malaysian undergraduates
title_full Politeness strategies in twitter updates of female English language studies Malaysian undergraduates
title_fullStr Politeness strategies in twitter updates of female English language studies Malaysian undergraduates
title_full_unstemmed Politeness strategies in twitter updates of female English language studies Malaysian undergraduates
title_short Politeness strategies in twitter updates of female English language studies Malaysian undergraduates
title_sort politeness strategies in twitter updates of female english language studies malaysian undergraduates
url http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11166/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11166/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11166/1/16103-49557-1-PB.pdf