Speaker
Description
Politeness is a fundamental dimension of human communication, shaping how speakers negotiate face, manage social relationships, and exercise power. Talent competition programs such as American Idol offer a rich, naturalistic corpus of spoken English in which judges, contestants, and hosts continuously navigate asymmetrical power dynamics through strategic linguistic choices. Drawing on Brown and Levinson's politeness theory, this study examines the politeness strategies employed by judges and contestants during the audition round of American Idol 2026. Qualitative discourse analysis was applied to a corpus of selected audition interactions, with attention to positive politeness, negative politeness, bald-on-record, and off-record strategies. The findings reveal that judges predominantly deploy positive and off-record strategies when delivering criticism, while contestants rely heavily on positive politeness to perform deference and gratitude. This study contributes to the growing body of pragmatics research on media discourse and offers implications for EFL learners seeking to develop sociopragmatic competence through authentic English-language input in globally accessible contexts.
Biography
Nguyen Ngoc Vinh is a university lecturer at Hoc vien Quoc te, where she has been teaching English since 2009. With over fifteen years of experience in higher education, she has taught both General English and English for Specific Purposes across a wide range of programs, developing a strong commitment to research-informed and learner-centered pedagogy. She holds a Master of Arts in English Language and is currently pursuing a doctorate with a focus on linguistics. Her research interests include pragmatics, discourse analysis, politeness theory, and the use of authentic media texts in language education. Her current research examines politeness strategies in real-world English-language contexts, with particular attention to how findings can inform sociopragmatic competence development among EFL learners. She is committed to bridging theoretical linguistics and classroom practice, and actively participates in academic conferences to contribute to the growing body of knowledge in English language teaching and applied linguistics.
| Affiliate type | University |
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