TY - JFULL AU - Tinatin Kurdghelashvili PY - 2015/2/ TI - Speech Acts and Politeness Strategies in an EFL Classroom in Georgia T2 - International Journal of Cognitive and Language Sciences SP - 305 EP - 309 VL - 9 SN - 1307-6892 UR - https://publications.waset.org/pdf/10000518 PU - World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology NX - Open Science Index 97, 2015 N2 - The paper deals with the usage of speech acts and politeness strategies in an EFL classroom in Georgia (Rep of). It explores the students’ and the teachers’ practice of the politeness strategies and the speech acts of apology, thanking, request, compliment / encouragement, command, agreeing / disagreeing, addressing and code switching. The research method includes observation as well as a questionnaire. The target group involves the students from Georgian public schools and two certified, experienced local English teachers. The analysis is based on Searle’s Speech Act Theory and Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies. The findings show that the students have certain knowledge regarding politeness yet they fail to apply them in English communication. In addition, most of the speech acts from the classroom interaction are used by the teachers and not the students. Thereby, it is suggested that teachers should cultivate the students’ communicative competence and attempt to give them opportunities to practise more English speech acts than they do today. ER -