Politeness and Face-Threatening Acts in Peer Observation Discourse: A Critical Analysis

Considering the importance of different kinds of politeness strategies and possibility of face-threatening acts (FTAs) in post-observation conferences (POCs) in peer observation of teaching (POT), the current study examined mitigation in the POC discourse of Iranian EFL teachers to determine the most frequently used and least frequently used mitigation devices. Using convenient sampling, the study specifically addressed the POC discourse of ۸ Iranian EFL teachers from Sama Institute in Azadshahr and Sharifinia Institute in Aliabad in Golestan, Iran. The POCs were audio and video recorded and transcribed. Then, each suggestion was examined according to Wajnrybs (۱۹۹۴) typology of utterance-level mitigation and were accordingly classified. The findings of this study indicated that asides, interrogative, modal verbs, qualms, and hedging modifiers were the most frequently-used devices, and pragmatic indirect, conventionally indirect, aspect shift and shift in tense were least frequently used mitigation devices employed by Iranian EFL teachers to deliver feedback. The implications hold for language teachers, language supervisors, teacher education programs, and language institutes all over the world