pedagogical application of politeness strategies vs. face-threatening acts among iranian efl learners writing performance in grade eight across gender

The present study aimed to investigate politeness strategies vs. face-threatening acts found in iranian junior high school efl learners’ writing performance across genders. to this end, seventy-seven out of one hundred and fifteen male and female students whose ages were 13-15 as the participants were assigned to complete conversations. the responses of the students were compared with brown and levinson’s politeness strategies. this study enjoyed a mixed-method research design. first, a reliable ket test was administered to homogenize and select the participants. then the number of ftas and politeness strategies were counted and classified into negative and positive ftas using brown and levinson's model. in the second phase, the features of politeness strategies appeared in the examined texts analyzed using johnson's (1992) model. written texts were evaluated by the researcher in terms of politeness on the five-point politeness likert scale. the findings of this study revealed that male efl learners were more polite than female students. furthermore, the results showed that the more the numbers of negative politeness strategies were used, the more the number of face-threatening acts were employed.