The Role of the Moroccan Culture in Shaping Politeness When Performing Face Threatening Acts among EFL Advanced Learners

Verbal politeness has been investigated many times in different cultures and languages. One of the great works in the history of politeness theory is the work of Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson (Politeness: Some universals in language usage. 1987). This magnificent research provides the world with a spectrum of politeness styles which are claimed to be applicable in all cultures and languages. It condemns the Arab world of being less polite than the west because of their kinship bonds. This ethnocentric judgment has been approved by other scholars who claimed to conduct deep research on Arabic societies, which proves them to be direct, i.e. rude, when performing face threatening acts. Therefore, this study tests these ethnocentric judgments on Moroccan adults and put the theory of ‘positive and negative societies’ of Brown and Levinson into question. Additionally, this research investigates whether the Moroccan culture impacts the choice of politeness strategies when performing face threatening acts in English language among EFL advanced learners through administering two questionnaires in Moroccan language and in English language among 175 participants. The results of this research threaten the truthfulness of the claim of Brown & Levinson about kinship societies. The young Moroccans who participated in this research tend to use “Negative politeness” in casual life situations unless when they address their parents or when they intend to persuade the addressee rather than to convince them. Results also show that young Moroccans who participated in this research are not rude and that they don’t consider the “Off record” style as the highest in the degree of politeness. Likewise, it is found that there is an impact of the Moroccan culture on the choice of the strategy of politeness. These results contribute to the existing literature and question the soundness of the ethnocentric judgments.