How to communicate politely and be a tutor, too: NS-NNS interaction and writing center practice

Abstract

Conflicts between comprehensibility, politeness, and effective tutorial practice frequently create communicative impasses in interaction between university writing center tutors and their tutees, who are both native (NS) and non-native speakers (NNSs) of English. Conversational excerpts drawn from a study of 34 tutorials demonstrate that such impasses are more frequent in tutorials with NNS tutees. The primary context for these impasses is the offering of tutor evaluations and suggestions, although the interactional features of volubility and interruptions are also implicated in the analysis. I argue that the trade-offs tutors make between comprehensibility, politeness, and effectiveness are essential characteristics of NS-NNS tutorial interaction and that open acknowledgment of the conflicts between communicative aims is essential to principled tutorial practice in this institutional discourse context.