Politeness Strategies in Students’ Written Discourse: Memorandum of Complaint

Abstract

This study was conducted to compare the types of politeness strategies applied by cadet officers and civilian students in writing memorandum of complaint. Based on Brown and Levinson’s theoretical framework, the results found that the cadet officers tended to use more “bald on record strategy” while the civilian students showed a higher frequency in the use of positive and negative politeness strategies. This paper highlights the importance of language instructors in sensitizing their students to the effective use of politeness strategies in their writing and speaking in order to avoid miscommunication.