<![CDATA[Linguistic politeness is a crucial pragmatic competence in cross-cultural communication; however, teaching it in multicultural classrooms presents complex challenges due to the varying social norms and cultural values among learners. This study aims to examine the use of a pragmatic approach in teaching linguistic politeness within multicultural classrooms and its effectiveness in enhancing learners' pragmatic awareness. Employing a mixed-methods approach with a sequential explanatory design, the study involved 48 learners of Indonesian as a second language from five countries (Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and India), divided into two groups. The experimental group (n=24) participated in pragmatics-based politeness instruction using an explicit approach that included contrastive analysis of speech acts, cross-cultural situational role-plays, and reflection on cases of politeness violations. The control group (n=24) received conventional instruction based on the rote memorization of polite expressions. Data were collected via Discourse Completion Tasks (DCT), pragmatic awareness tests, and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative results showed that the experimental group significantly (p < 0.01) outperformed the control group in selecting politeness strategies that were contextually and culturally appropriate. Qualitative findings indicated that the pragmatic approach helped learners develop a high level of pragmatic awareness, reduce negative pragmatic transfer, and enhance cross-cultural communicative empathy. The study concludes that the systematic application of pragmatics—emphasizing norm comparison, real-case analysis, and critical reflection—is effective in fostering flexible and adaptive linguistic politeness competence in multicultural classrooms. Pedagogically, this implies that language teachers need to design pragmatic instruction that is responsive to the diverse cultural backgrounds of their learners.]]>
