Höflichkeit

Ploiteness is an interactive activitzy, which is far more than the mere use of certain linguistic forms. Rather, the phenomenon is defined as the central feature of relational work and therefore as an aspect of nearly any communicative activity. Accordingly, politeness is considered an important component of communicative competence. Nearly every textbook used to teach German as a Foreign Language aims explicitly at fostering the communicative competence of the learners. The text examines to what extent this goal is pursued in grammar books as well, what role politeness plays in the books represented in the corpus and if or how they contextualize grammatical structures in the attempt to enhance communicative skills.