Investigating Politeness and Academic Background: An analytical Approach

Within Language learners' pragmatic competence, speech acts play crucial role which is even further accentuated duet to cross cultural differences. The present study investigated the effect of academic education on acquiring native norms expressing condolences. To this end a discourse completion test (DCT) was administered to two groups of Iranian EFL learners including 30 sophomores and 30 seniors as well as 20 English native speakers (ENS). The result of the study showed significant differences among the three groups in using different condolence strategies except apologetic and sympathy expressions. As the sophomores outperformed the seniors in the appropriate use of some strategies, more attention is required to be paid to the way such strategies are dealt with in English classes.