“…In the case where native speakers do not recognise that the origin of friction is of linguistic concern and not a personality issue, they violate a receptive maxim of quality politeness (a reverse case to Grice's, 1999, productive maxims of politeness), in that they understand information in a false way, which in turn leads them, as a consequence, to generalise potentially erroneous views concerning the character or personality of the L2 speaker (Riley, 1989) which they have no ethical right to judge. However, the final choice and thus the responsibility always belong to the learners/users of the language, as they are the ones who encode strategically (Ypsilandis, 2023). In this light, learners should be allowed to decide how to proceed with their final strategic choices, provided that these are conscious/aware decisions/selections based on knowledge and are not grounded either on erroneous L1 transfer or faulty perceptions about the L2 language and culture.…”