SPEECH ETIQUETTE IN THE TEACHING OF BULGARIAN LANGUAGE: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE TEXTBOOK CONTENT FOR 5TH GRADE

Abstract

Speech etiquette plays a key role in regulating social interaction by signaling social distance, hierarchical relations, cultural norms, and communicative appropriateness. In Bulgarian language education, it constitutes an essential pragmatic and cultural component, whose acquisition requires not only lexical reproduction but also the understanding of its grammatical and contextual markers. This paper presents a comparative analysis of how speech etiquette is introduced and interpreted in three alternative Bulgarian language textbooks for 5th grade, approved under the 2016/2017 national curriculum. The study outlines differences in theoretical frameworks and the typologization of politeness formulas, as well as inconsistencies in their categorization according to formal or informal communicative contexts. It emphasizes the need for greater methodological consistency and argues that integrating morphological instruction with the pragmatic use of politeness formulas supports the development of sociolinguistic competence. Morphological means—mood, number, pronouns, and modal constructions—are considered key to distinguishing between speech registers and achieving communicative appropriateness. The position is defended that speech etiquette should not be treated as a peripheral topic but as a core component of students’ pragmatic and intercultural literacy.