Draft of Developed Research Topic on Politeness and Impoliteness Strategies

 Draft of Developed Research Topic on Politeness and Impoliteness Strategies

Politeness and Impoliteness Strategies in Lecturer–Student Communication Within Cyberpragmatic Chats: A Relational and Rapport-Based Perspective

This proposed research develops the earlier cyberpragmatic study by repositioning politeness and impoliteness not merely as rule-governed linguistic behavior, but as dynamic relational practices negotiated between lecturers and students in digitally mediated academic interaction. In the last five years, scholarship on politeness and impoliteness has increasingly moved beyond the traditional Brown and Levinson face-saving paradigm toward interactional, relational, multimodal, and context-sensitive approaches. Therefore, lecturer–student communication in WhatsApp, Telegram, email, Google Classroom, and other online platforms should be analyzed as sites where power, identity, solidarity, institutional hierarchy, and interpersonal meanings are constantly co-constructed.

Arundale’s Relational Theory of Face views face not as an individual possession but as participants’ emergent sense of connectedness and separateness during interaction. This perspective is highly relevant to cyberpragmatic chats because students and lecturers continually negotiate distance and closeness through greetings, response timing, address terms, emoji use, apologies, directives, and silence. A delayed lecturer response, for example, may be interpreted either as institutional busyness or relational distancing, depending on contextual expectations. Likewise, overly brief student messages such as “Sir, task?” may threaten relational connectedness because they minimize respect rituals expected in Indonesian academic culture. Thus, the study can examine how digital utterances index inclusion, exclusion, authority, and mutual recognition.

Spencer-Oatey’s Rapport Management Theory also provides a strong analytical lens because it explains how interactants manage three domains: face sensitivities, sociality rights, and interactional goals. In lecturer–student cyber communication, students often seek academic goals (extensions, clarification, recommendations), while lecturers balance pedagogical authority with approachability. Recent developments in rapport studies emphasize the role of expectation management, appropriateness norms, and emotion in online interaction. For instance, students may perceive a lecturer’s one-word reply as impolite because it violates expectations of warmth, even if the message is informationally sufficient. Conversely, lecturers may evaluate repeated reminders from students as intrusive violations of their autonomy rights.

Recent impoliteness theory (2019–2025) has also highlighted unintentional impoliteness, perceived impoliteness, algorithmic pressure, and digital aggression. In asynchronous chat environments, impoliteness often arises not from deliberate offense but from absent paralinguistic cues, message brevity, typing style, punctuation, or timing. A lecturer’s use of capitals (SUBMIT TODAY) may be read as urgency or anger. A student’s failure to greet may stem from efficiency rather than disrespect. Therefore, the study should distinguish speaker intention, hearer perception, and community norms, especially in bilingual Indonesian-English contexts where pragmatic transfer frequently occurs.

The Indonesian Islamic university context adds further novelty because politeness is frequently enhanced through religious expressions such as Assalamu’alaikum, Jazakumullah khairan, mohon izin, insyaAllah, or barakallah. These expressions function not only as lexical politeness markers but also as identity resources that strengthen moral alignment, humility, and relational warmth. However, recent discourse studies suggest such expressions may also become routinized or strategically instrumental. Hence, this research can investigate whether religious language genuinely builds rapport or merely performs expected etiquette within institutional communication.

Methodologically, the study can be expanded through a digital discourse ethnography design combining screenshot corpora, sequential discourse analysis, interviews, and perception surveys. Rather than only classifying messages into polite or impolite categories, the research should trace interactional episodes: requests for deadline extensions, grade complaints, delayed responses, misunderstood humor, reminder messages, and conflict repair sequences. Multimodal resources such as emojis, stickers, punctuation, voice notes, read receipts, and typing pauses should also be included because recent cyberpragmatics recognizes these as meaning-making resources that shape relational interpretations.

This development offers several contributions. Theoretically, it integrates classic politeness/impoliteness with Relational Theory and Rapport Management Theory to explain how digital academic relationships are negotiated. Empirically, it provides updated evidence from Indonesian higher education where multilingualism, hierarchy, and religious identity intersect. Practically, findings can inform digital etiquette guidelines for lecturers and students, helping reduce miscommunication, anxiety, and unnecessary conflict in online academic communication. In an era where university interaction increasingly occurs through messaging platforms, understanding cyberpragmatic politeness is no longer peripheral but central to educational quality and relational well-being.

Possible Updated Title Variants

1. Politeness and Impoliteness Strategies in Lecturer–Student Cyberpragmatic Chats: A Relational and Rapport Management Perspective
2. Negotiating Respect and Power in WhatsApp Academic Chats: Politeness and Impoliteness in Lecturer–Student Communication
3. Digital Facework in Higher Education: Lecturer–Student Politeness and Impoliteness in Indonesian Cyberpragmatics
4. Relational Dynamics of Online Academic Messaging: Politeness, Impoliteness, and Rapport in UIN Salatiga

Research Gap (2021–2026)

• Many studies analyze workplace or peer online communication, but fewer focus on lecturer–student hierarchical chat interaction.
• Limited integration of Relational Theory + Rapport Management Theory in cyberpragmatics.
• Few studies examine Islamic university discourse and the pragmatic role of religious expressions.
• Underexplored role of message timing, emoji, read receipts, and silence in politeness judgments.
• Limited bilingual Indonesian-English comparative pragmatics in academic messaging.

Novelty

• Combines politeness, impoliteness, relational face, and rapport management in one framework.
• Focuses on multimodal chat practices (emoji, punctuation, timing, voice notes).
• Examines religious politeness markers in academic digital communication.
• Investigates both production and perception of politeness among lecturers and students.