Silence acts as politeness strategy in the classroom——A case study of Chinese teacher students in intercultural MA classroom

摘要

@@ IntroductionrnWith the development of paralinguistics, nonverbal interactions have drawn more and more attention (Larry et.al 2000) and silence is considered as the nonverbal interaction strategy in communication activities. Linguists have explored silence from different perspectives. According to Saville and Tannen, silence is used to perform positive, negative and off-record politeness strate-gies(Saville, 1985; Tannen, 1985). Moreover, Kurzon identifies intentional and unintentional silence, referring the former as silence used intentionally as a strategy while the later is silence caused due to extreme anxiety, embarrass-ment or panic(Kurzon, 1998).