PRAGMATICS AND PEDAGOGY - CONVERSATIONAL RULES AND POLITENESS STRATEGIES MAY INHIBIT EFFECTIVE TUTORING

In this article, we identify ways that Grice's (1975) conversational r ules and P. Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness strategies are comm only employed in one-to-one tutoring interactions. We examined two cro ss-aged tutoring corpora from research methods and algebra tutoring se ssions to show how these rules and strategies can potentially enhance and inhibit effective tutoring. Examples of these costs and benefits a re presented within a five-step dialogue frame proposed by Graesser an d Person (1994). There appear to be differences in the use of these po liteness strategies when algebra tutoring protocols are compared with research methods protocols. We suggest that politeness strategies are more prevalent in less constrained domains, even though their use may inhibit effective tutoring.