This study analyzed verbal responses of status unequals in situations where a linguistic mistake occurred. Subjects were 80 native Turkish-speaking university students (28 males, 52 females) who participated in role-playing exercises using such situations. Two aspects of the responses were investigated: the semantic and syntactic formulas that native speakers of Turkish use in these contexts, and the politeness devices used to soften the impact of a potentially face-threatening speech act. The latter were also compared with the devices preferred by native speakers of North American English and Japanese. The objective was to examine one aspect of the sociolinguistic competence of Turkish speakers and to reveal possible cross-cultural variations in politeness strategies. The politeness strategies examined, drawn from other research, are listed in an appendix. A list of references is also included. (MSE)