Politeness and culture in second language acquisition. By Sooho Song. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Pp. xii, 164. ISBN 9781137030627. $80 (Hb).
Reviewed by Theresa McGarry, East Tennessee State University

This timely book presents a comparative empirical study of politeness phenomena in the English requests of native speakers and of speakers whose first language is Korean. In the preface, Sooho Song contextualizes her study in terms of the importance of both politeness and culture for intercultural communication. The first chapter (1–7) goes more into the practical and theoretical significance of the relationship between politeness and culture in language acquisition, and also sets out the research questions: how culture influences speakers’ perceptions of ‘weightiness’ of a request and selection of a politeness strategy, and whether cultural differences ultimately affect learners’ politeness expressions. The second chapter (8–62) provides a brief overview of first language effects on language learning, interlanguage pragmatics, theories of politeness, including sociocultural aspects thereof, and politeness relating to sociocultural aspects of society in Korea.

In Ch. 3 (63–83), S proposes a revision of Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson’s politeness theory that incorporates a role for culture-specific perceptions. She then describes the method of data collection and analysis. The data include the responses of about 160 undergraduates, half at a US university and half at a Korean university, to sixteen given situations involving a request. The respondents rated each situation with regard to social distance, power ratio, and size of task imposition; and they also constructed an utterance appropriate to the situation. The constructed utterances were analyzed with respect to both the politeness characteristics of the main sentence performing the request and the supportive moves accompanying that sentence.

Ch. 4 (84–134) presents the results of the analysis at two levels. At the macro-level, the analysis of the aggregate data supports Brown and Levinson’s model, and the analysis of the two groups of speakers separately shows a difference in the perception of situations, leading S to suggest that the model is not universally applicable with regard to the perception of the size of imposition involved in a request. At the micro-level, the results also indicate some cultural differences regarding social distance and power ratio perceptions relating to specific situations, e.g. Koreans perceive more social distance between a grandchild and his/her grandfather than do Americans. Moreover, proficiency levels, learning experience, and first language transfer may affect some strategy choices, such as the use of ‘I am sorry’. Ch. 5 (135–43) summarizes the findings and discusses the theoretical and pedagogical implications of this empirical test of a well-known politeness model.

While the methodology has some limitations, notably that the utterances are elicited rather than naturally occurring, the author discusses these and justifies her methodological choices. The book contains an unfortunate number of editing lapses and some organizational shortcomings. However, the study constitutes an important advance in the study of politeness, particularly with regard to cultural specificities, that both informs and inspires.