Evaluation of (im)politeness in intercultural requests in Myanmar (speaker’s perspective)

A Pilot Study

Abstract

The present paper explores how native and non-native speakers evaluate (im)politeness in intercultural requests in the Myanmar language from the perspective of the speaker. It is aimed to investigate how (im)politeness is processed in making requests in intercultural communications between native and non-native speakers of Myanmar language, not only from the point of speakers in the conversations but also from the point of native and non-native speakers of Myanmar language. Since this study focuses on the intercultural communication, the target participants are native and non-native speakers of Myanmar language. Two different groups of participants responded to the questionnaire including eight intercultural requests from the speaker’s perspective. Using the data obtained from 40 participants (20 from each group), the data analysis was conducted using Descriptive statistics and Inferential statistics. For being a pilot study, the validity and reliability scores of the questionnaire were also explored. A group of experts from Myanmar acted as the panel for testing content validity and approved the validity of the questionnaire. For the reliability, 0.806 Cronback’s alpha score was obtained. As for the main finding, native and non-native speakers’ different perceptions of (im)politeness can be seen obviously towards every intercultural request, highlighting the role of culture in (im)politeness procession. Moreover, perceptions of (im)politeness are not similar pattern even in the same group of informants (native speakers or non-native speakers). The most striking fact is that (im)politeness evaluation is not related to the contextual factors in intercultural communication.