Abstract

This study aimed to explore the politeness phenomenon in Libyan postgraduate students' email requests to their lecturers based at four top-ranked Malaysian universities: University of Malaya, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia, and Universiti Utara Malaysia. The data consisted of 109 e-mail requests to faculty written by 20 Libyan postgraduate students who were studying in Malaysia. The data was analyzed by adopting Brown and Levinson (1987) politeness theory which is considered as a plausible analytical framework to identify politeness strategies. The research method and design used in this study was essentially qualitative approach. The findings of the current study revealed that the Libyan postgraduate students applied mostly negative politeness strategies more than the other politeness strategies. This study argues that these e-mails which featuring a high level of directness, displayed a fundamental inadequacy in the use of politeness strategies, thus creating potentially a higher chance of pragmatic failure.