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Teaching discursive interpretation of FL pragmatic politeness to the Egyptian EFL senior students

The present study aimed to introduce the discursive interpretation of FL pragmatic politeness as a new approach for teaching FL conversation. Data were collected from 100 participants through an assessment questionnaire of FL pragmatic politeness. The participants were asked to assess the responses to apology-based situations in accordance with (im)politeness criteria of apology strategies before and after attending the training programme. Data were analyzed in terms of the discursive interpretation of FL pragmatic politeness; namely, perception, evaluation and assessment of what constitutes polite or impolite responses. Frequencies and one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were conducted to find out the significant differences between the total frequencies of the pre and post-tests. The findings showed significant improvement in the participants' assessment of (im)politeness. The findings also emphasized the potentiality of teaching the discursive approach of FL pragmatic politeness to the Egyptian EFL senior students.

trained and taught how to evaluate, perceive and assess FL pragmatic politeness according to the discursive approach.

Statement of the problem
The present study examined the possibility of teaching the newly investigated discursive interpretation of FL pragmatic politeness in the Egyptian context. It handled the potentiality of training Egyptian EFL senior students to judge politeness based on their perception and evaluation. It tested the ability of Egyptian EFL senior students to understand the discursive interpretation of FL pragmatic politeness. In other words, the present study looked into how the participants' perception and evaluation of certain apology, in terms of (im)politeness would change after attending the training programme of the discursive approach. Thus, the current study aimed to introduce the discursive interpretation of FL pragmatic politeness as a new approach for teaching FL conversation. The importance of the discursive interpretation dwells on the fact that it enables the Egyptian EFL learners to be aware of how native speakers of English view apology strategies in terms of politeness. For instance, the traditional ways of teaching conversation consider 'sorry' as a polite apology strategy. However, 'sorry' may be viewed as impolite apology strategy based on how the hearer perceives its sincerity. The present study also provided training to Egyptian EFL senior students to use the discursive approach of FL politeness. The present study is based on the rationale of discursive approach of (im)politeness as introduced by Haugh (2103) and Culpeper and Terkourafi (2017), and Haugh and Culpeper (2018).

Questions
The current study sought to answer the following questions: 1. Why is it necessary to teach the discursive approach of FL politeness to the Egyptian EFL senior students? 2. What is the performance of the Egyptian EFL senior students in evaluating the (im)politeness of FL pragmatic strategies before being taught the discursive approach of FL politeness? 3. What is the effect of teaching the discursive approach of FL pragmatic politeness on the Egyptian EFL senior students' FL pragmatic performance? Aims The present study aimed to: 1. Highlight the importance of teaching the discursive approach of FL politeness to the Egyptian EFL senior students. 2. Measure the performance of the Egyptian EFL senior students in evaluating the (im)politeness of FL pragmatic strategies before being taught the discursive approach of FL politeness

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3. Determine the effect of teaching the discursive approach of FL pragmatic politeness on the Egyptian EFL senior students' FL pragmatic performance.

Significance of the study
The study is significant because it introduced the use of the discursive approach in teaching FL conversation in the Egyptian context. It contributed to the development of teaching FL to Egyptian students because it did not rely on conventional ways of teaching FL conversation. It rather trained Egyptian EFL students to evaluate politeness based on their perception. It reinforced the teaching of FL pragmatics to the Egyptian EFL students. Thus, it helped them to master the appropriate use of FL speech acts and develop their FL pragmatic and interactional competence.

Literature review
Rieger (2017) viewed apology as an interactional exchange not just in terms of Illocutionary Force Indicating Device IFID. Rieger analyzed natural interaction situations elicited from the Sitcom interaction using the discursive approach in analyzing the apology responses. Rieger explained that 'sorry' may not serve as an apology; it may have a discourse function to open or close conversation. In addition, insincere 'sorry' does not necessarily express real remorse on the part of the apologizer, but rather it is considered as a marker for repairing the situation, not for performing apology. This is related to the fact that insincere 'sorry' lacks the offender's intention to use 'sorry' as an apology. In the discursive pragmatic approach, the (im)politeness of sorry is not dependent on the verbal expression but rather on the interactant's evaluation of the apologizer's intention and his/her perception of the whole apologetic behavior as polite or impolite. Thus, the mechanical utterance 'sorry' could be considered as an insufficient apology because it lacks sincerity and reflects indifference on the part of the apologizer towards the victim. Katchamat (2018) examined the impact of using flipped classroom on developing the Thai EFL learners' pragmatic competence in expressing apology. Data were collected from twenty-two students majoring in English who were asked to respond to a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) as pre and post-tests. The flipped classroom consisted of before-class, in-class and after-class procedures. As for before-class procedures, the participants watched online videos about apology in order to define usage of apology. They also compared English ISSN 1110-2721 apology strategies to Thai apology strategies. As for in-class procedures, the participants presented what they found apology to their classmates and the FL instructor made discussion of their presentation. As for afterclass procedures, the participants submitted their videotaped presentation to their instructor. Katchamat found that the frequency of using apology expressions differed between the control and experimental groups, but the difference was statistically insignificant. However, in terms of appropriateness, the flipped classroom instructions were effective in improving the accuracy and appropriateness of the experimental group when using apology strategies compared to the control group.
Haugh and Chang (2019) investigated the perception of impoliteness in terms of different cultures among twenty five Australians of different cultural backgrounds. The researchers asserted that individuals of different cultural backgrounds vary in their perception of polite or impolite apology strategies. In other words, the variability of perceiving apology strategies in terms of (im)politeness varied significantly among the participants who belong to different cultural backgrounds. Hence, the participants relied on different cultural norms that determine the polite or impolite apology responses. These cultural norms are of significant variability among the participants. Such varying perception of (im)politeness affects the theorization of politeness theory. Haugh and Chang emphasized that there is a need for further research on the theorization of (im)politeness. They also recommended that those studies should rely on eliciting authentic data of natural discourse instead of using constructed data of language use.
Hussein, AlBakri, and Seng (2020) investigated how teaching pragmatics (i.e. pragmatic instruction) can enhance the Iraqi EFL learners' communicative competence in English. Hussein, et. al. (2020) asserted the necessary role of EFL instructors and teachers to teach pragmatics through using activities in different social contexts. They explained that some Iraqi EFL learners may fail in recognizing the intention of English speakers because they are not familiar with using the pragmatic aspects of social expressions. As such, there should be an increasing interest in using pragmatic-based activities to enhance the communicative competence of Iraqi EFL learners when expressing FL apology and request speech acts. These activities helped to develop the pragmatic and culture awareness of Iraqi EFL learners in using pragmatic strategies. Therefore, Iraqi students would be able to use language properly in daily situations as a result of developing their FL communicative competence. Hussein, et. al. pointed out that FL pragmatic instruction can rely on two types of activities: (1) sociocultural activities and (2)  that the first type depends on activities that develop the EFL learners' recognition of using FL language forms in an appropriate way. Thus, the first type of activities deals with the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competences of Iraqi EFL learners. The second type of activities uses language functions to develop the Iraqi EFL learners' FL communicative competence. Language functions can be taught via group work and cultural communication.
Pourmousavi and Zenouzagh (2020) examined the effect of teacher feedback, whether in groups or to individual learners, on improving Iranian EFL learners' ability to express apology in letter writing. Thirty two participants were divided into a control group and an experimental group with sixteen participants each. Data were collected through a quick placement test where participants were pretested and post-tested. Participants of both groups were taught three forms of writing apology letters, namely formal, informal and business apology letters. The control group received teacher feedback in groups while the experimental group received teacher feedback to individual learners. The teacher group and individual types of feedback were delivered collectively and individually to the participants through online applications. Pourmousavi and Zenouzagh reported that both types of teacher feedback, group and individual, had significant contribution towards the improvement of Iranian EFL learners' expression of apology. However, the teacher individual feedback was more effective compared to teacher group feedback in improving the participants' ability to use apology strategies in letter writing. These apology strategies include illocutionary force indicating device (IFID), offer of repair, responsibility of offence, and promise of forbearance.

Methodology Research design
The present study is an experimental research where the participants were pre-tested and post-tested after attending a training course. The current study is a mixed approach-based qualitative and quantitative research. It is qualitative as it provides descriptive analysis of the participants' responses to the pre-test. It is also considered as a quantitative research because it compared the results of the pre and posttests using the one way analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Participants
The participants were one hundred English-majoring senior students enrolled at the Department of Languages and Translation, Higher

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Institute for Specific Studies, Haram. They studied conversation as a core course combined with essay writing.

Data collection instruments
Data were collected from 100 participants through an assessment questionnaire of FL pragmatic politeness. The politeness evaluation questionnaire was based on the Likert scale with five potential responses: (1) very impolite, (2) impolite, (3) not sure, (4) very polite, and (5) polite (Culpeper, Mackey, and Taguchi, 2018). The politeness evaluation questionnaire consists of 10 situations of offence, apology expressions, classification of apology strategies and the previous five potential responses. The illustration of the politeness evaluation questionnaire resembles Table I in addition to the five potential responses. The 10 situations are intensively used in various interlanguage pragmatic research. The participants were asked to assess the responses to various apology-based situations in accordance with (im)politeness criteria of apology strategies. The participants' perception and assessment of FL pragmatic politeness was pretested and post-tested after attending the training programme. The perception and assessment questionnaire of FL pragmatic politeness was piloted using 20 Egyptian EFL senior students. The purpose was to determine its reliability and the easiness or difficulty of its items. Piloting the questionnaire indicated that its Cronbach Alpha coefficient is .93 suggesting high reliability of its items.

Procedure
The researcher designed a training programme which was taught to Egyptian EFL senior students as part of the conversation syllabus in the academic year 2018-2019 (Table 1). The training programme was based on different apology schemes (i.e. Linde, 2009;Bardovi-Harlig, 2010;Sanz, and Leow, 2011;and Bardovi-Harlig, 2013). The training programme aimed to familiarize the participants with the different strategies of apology sustained with various illustrative examples. The training programme included criteria for classifying apology strategies into polite and impolite ways of apologizing (Table 2). These criteria helped the students to understand politeness according to the FL culture. It also includes several apology situations performed by English native speakers (Haugh, 2013;Young, 2009;and Eelen, 2014;Leech, 2014). As such, the participants were knowledgeable of which apology strategies that are viewed as polite strategies based on the target language culture and which ones are classified as impolite apology strategies.

Data analysis
Data were analyzed in terms of the discursive interpretation of FL pragmatic politeness, namely perception, evaluation and assessment of what constitutes polite or impolite responses. Frequencies and percentages of the five responses were computed pre and post the training programme. Total frequencies of classifying all strategies, particularly those shown in Table 2 as impolite strategies, were compared in the pretest and the post-test. One way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to find out the significant differences between the total frequencies of the pre-test and post-test.

Results
The results showed significant improvement in the participants' assessment of polite and impolite apology strategies, particularly after attending the training programme of discursive interpretation of FL pragmatic politeness. Tables 3 and 4 indicate that the participants had no difficulty in evaluating and perceiving the polite apology strategies (IFID, acknowledgment, and offer of repair) as polite apology strategies. The total frequencies of evaluating these strategies as polite strategies in the pre-test and the post-test were 300 each. It was also noticed that the frequency of evaluating these strategies as 'very polite' in the post-test (180) was higher than that of the pre-test. The increase of the 'very polite' response was attributed to the effect of the training programme.
As for the strategies classified in Table 2 as impolite strategies, the majority of the participants evaluated them in the pre-test as either 'very polite' and 'polite' with the total frequency of (619). The total frequencies that evaluated these strategies in the pre-test as either 'very impolite' or 'impolite' were (46). On the other hand, Table 4 showed the participants' evaluation and perception of these strategies in the post-test were improved as the total frequencies of evaluating and perceiving them as either 'very impolite' and 'impolite' were (670). It was also clear that the total frequencies of evaluating and perceiving these strategies in the post-test as 'very polite' and 'polite' were (30). The reduced frequencies of evaluating them as 'very polite' and 'polite' on the one hand and the increased frequencies of evaluating them in the post as 'very impolite' and 'impolite' on the other hand indicated the effectiveness of the training programme of the discursive interpretation of FL pragmatic politeness in improving the participants' evaluation and perception of the apology strategies in terms of (im)politeness. These findings also emphasized the potentiality of teaching the discursive approach of FL pragmatic politeness to the Egyptian EFL students. These findings are compatible with those reported by Katchamat (2018) and Hussein, et. al. (2020).    Table 5 indicates the changing frequencies of impolite apology strategies that were perceived 'very polite' and 'polite' in the pre-test (619) and then perceived very impolite and impolite in the post-test (670). The p-value was >.05 indicating the improvement of the participants' ability to distinguish between polite and impolite apology strategies. In other words, the training programme was effective in changing the participants' perception, evaluation of the impolite apology strategies. Due to the discursive approach of FL politeness interpretation, Egyptian EFL senior students had become aware that excuse, minimization, problematizing a precondition, query, further-task oriented remarks, insincere sorry should not be perceived and evaluated under FL pragmatic politeness, but FL pragmatic impoliteness instead. These findings are similar to those reported by Rieger (2017) and Haugh and Chang (2019).

TEFL implications and conclusion
1. Why is it necessary to teach the discursive approach of FL politeness to the Egyptian EFL senior students ? The present study found that FL pragmatic instruction is necessary to the Egyptian EFL senior students because it had positive effects on their understanding of the discursive interpretation of FL pragmatic politeness. This was evident in the improvement of the participants' understanding to properly evaluate FL pragmatic politeness after attending the training programme. This finding conformed the results reported by Katchamat (2018), Hussein, et. al. (2020) on the importance of FL pragmatic instruction to develop the EFL learners' ability to use the speech acts appropriately. The Egyptian EFL senior students were trained how to evaluate and perceive the (im)politeness of apology expressions. For instance, 'sorry' can be considered as an impolite apology if it lacks apologetic intention on the part of the offender. As such, the participants were trained to differentiate between real apologetic 'sorry' and insincere 'sorry'. Therefore, the present study stressed that the EFL curricula planning in the Egyptian context should take into consideration the necessity of teaching pragmatics as a socio-cultural skill. Egyptian EFL learners should be aware of how the native speakers of English evaluate and perceive different apology strategies in terms of politeness as they do not simply consider each apology as a genuine expression of remorse or regret of the offender. The Egyptian EFL learners' comprehension of how apology expressions are usually evaluated will help develop their FL pragmatic competence. The Egyptian FL instructors should teach their students how to correctly use, evaluate and perceive different apology strategies as polite or impolite linguistic behavior.
2. What is the performance of the Egyptian EFL senior students in evaluating the (im)politeness of FL pragmatic strategies before being taught the discursive approach of FL politeness ? The Egyptian EFL senior students' performance in the pretest indicated that most of them were not aware of the proper evaluation of the impolite apology strategies in terms of (im)politeness. They had high frequency of evaluated the apology strategies shown in Table 2 as very polite and polite strategies. Only some participants evaluated these strategies as very impolite with the total frequency of (33) while some other participants evaluated them as impolite strategies with the total frequency of (25). In addition a few participants were not sure about the proper evaluation of these strategies in terms of (im)politeness with the total frequency of (23).
3. What is the effect of teaching the discursive approach of FL pragmatic politeness on the Egyptian EFL senior students' FL pragmatic performance? The present study found that it is effective to teach the discursive approach of FL politeness to the Egyptian EFL senior students in order to improve their proper evaluation of the impolite apology strategies. The Egyptian EFL senior students' performance in the posttest showed remarkable improvement in their evaluation of the impolite apology strategies in terms of (im)politeness. Only a few students maintained their evaluation of these strategies as very polite and polite strategies with total frequencies of (28) and (2) successively. All participants were sure of how to judge these impolite apology strategies. In addition, there was higher frequency in the posttest of evaluating these strategies as very impolite (392) and impolite (278) compared to the pretest.

Recommendations for further research:
The researcher suggested the following topics for conducting further research: