The Perception of Politeness and Impoliteness as a Social Practice: A Focus on Iraqi Culture

This research examines the perception and conceptualization of the sociolinguistic phenomenon of politeness and impoliteness in Iraqi culture. Politeness has come through two approaches traditional and post-modern. Both focus on different perspectives: the traditional approach focuses on the production of politeness and impoliteness whereas the discursive approach emphasizes the necessity of evaluating and perceiving them. We aim in this paper to examine how Iraqi people perceive im-politeness in their culture, what actions relevant to be polite and impolite? what sources of both politeness and impoliteness? what reasons that change the Iraqi society to be more or less polite than before? The data of this paper were collected by online questionnaire sent to more than 150 students at the Uniersity of Fallujah and Anbar. It was found that Iraqis mostly tend to be sociolinguistically polite and always attempt to keep tact in social interaction in light of the Islamic values and the inherited traditions though there are certain cases that involve impoliteness for specific intended or unintended purposes.