Résumé:
This study investigated the politeness strategies used by foreign language learners of English
at the University of Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia- Jijel, when performing the speech act of
complaint. It also attempted to identify the strategies used by these leaners in realizing
complaints. This study also tried to find out the influence of the social distance and power on
the choice of complaint strategies to achieve this aim, a discourse completion task (DCT) was
used to collect data, it was administered to fifty (50) Master learners of English. The data
obtained were coded and categorized following to Trosborg’s (1994) taxonomy of complaint
strategies, while politeness strategies were identified following Brown and Levinson’s (1987)
model. The results showed that these participants were direct when performing the speech act
of complaint. The Findings also, revealed that social variables influenced the participants’
choice of politeness strategies.