| Summary: | The Singapore government has increased the number of migrants due to shortage in population and for the prevention of an aging society. As construction is one of the industries that need large pool of foreign workers, it is necessary to investigate their language used, and in particular, the terms of their polite expressions. The use of courteous language is a reflection of the society’s cultural norms and habits. This study interviewed 13 Chinese construction workers to examine the language of courtesy from the use of words such as “please”, “thank you” and “sorry”. Through the examination of euphemism found in the workers’ conversations, the use of different polite expressions, sentence patterns, and intonations, we determined the politeness degrees applied by the workers. In addition, we also investigated the use of exclamatory phrases to understand how the workers express their emotions. Expressions of one’s emotions are believed to be able to display the politeness or impoliteness of the workers. The design of the study enabled us to understand the language use in different assumed conversational situations by foreign construction workers. The findings supported the hypothesis that foreign workers from a lower social class use language courtesy equally well, though the styles may be slightly different.
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