| Online academic discussion is an important type for exchanging academic information, which provides all peers an ideal opportunity to communicate directly through forums. Dialogin is such a learning community, which offers a number of forums with various topics for its members to ask questions and discuss current development in the field. As in other communication settings, politeness is observed. Linguistic politeness, as a means to achieve harmonious interpersonal relationships, is frequently used by topic creators and respondents to achieve their goals.In this paper, 50 topics in forum “Intercultural Advice Wanted” are selected from the website http://www. dialogin.com between May, 2010 and March, 2015. Based on Brown & Levinson’s politeness theory, the exchanges are analyzed to explore linguistic politeness employed by topic creators and respondents, the features of linguistic politeness and the reasons behind different choices of linguistic politeness, adopting both qualitative and quantitative methods.The results show that there are three types of politeness strategies within Brown & Levinson’s framework, namely, bald on record, positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies. Meanwhile, a special politeness strategy smiley is also found in online academic discussions. Then, the features of linguistic politeness are found. There are some similarities in the use of negative politeness strategies by topic creators and respondents. There are some differences in the employment of bald on record, positive politeness strategies and smiley strategy. Finally, the reasons for topic creators’ and respondents’ choices of linguistic politeness are analyzed. These can be attributed to the context of dialogin, participants’ different positions, and the features of language in online communication. This study demonstrates applicability of Brown & Levinson’s politeness theory and gives a comprehensive account of linguistic politeness in online academic discussions. |
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