Request Strategies
Request Strategies

Author: Yong-Ju Rue

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9027254214

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This book investigates request strategies in Mandarin Chinese and Korean, and is one of the first attempts to address cross-cultural strategies employed in the speech act of requests in two non-Western languages. The data, drawn from role-plays and naturally recorded conversations, complement each other in terms of exhaustiveness and authenticity. This study explores the similarities and differences of the request patterns that emerged in the Chinese and Korean data, and the intricate relation between request strategies and social factors (such as power and distance). The findings raise questions about the influence of methodology on data, and the applicability of so called universals to East Asian languages. They also offer new insights into generally held ideas of directness and requesting behaviours in Chinese and Korean, and the problems of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communication.This research is suggestive for the disciplines of cross-cultural pragmatics, cross-cultural communication, contrastive linguistics, applied linguistics and discourse analysis.

Request Sequences
Request Sequences

Author: Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 9027226296

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This monograph provides a micro-analytic description of instances of requests in everyday German conversation. Using the framework of CA, the study systematically analyzes the grammatical and syntactical structure of the request-turn and its response and of the conversational exchanges before and within the request base sequence, and the placement of the request sequence within the larger social interaction. Through an empirical analysis of individual cases of request sequences in German, the monograph describes in detail: (a) how speakers employ grammar and syntax as resources to construct turns at talk and accomplish the social action of request; (b) how speakers use grammatical and syntactical forms of the language to coordinate the production of the social action of requests; (c) how speakers use grammar and syntax as interactional resources to manage affiliative and remedial work (i.e., face work) when performing delicate social actions such as requests; and (d) how the context of the request activity impacts the grammatical and syntactical constructions of speakers' utterances. Additionally, the monograph demonstrates that both the grammatical construction of turns and their placement within the talk are oriented to the sequential context of the interaction.

Learning to Request in a Second Language
Learning to Request in a Second Language

Author: Machiko Achiba

Publisher: Multilingual Matters

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1853596124

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"In this study the child's interaction with different interlocutors was audio- and video-recorded. These recorded data are supplemented by diary entries that supply information on how the child perceived her second language learning and how she became able to join in interactions as an accepted user of Australian English." "This book will appeal widely to professionals and students in the fields of pragmatics, second language acquisition, bilingualism, child language, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics and socio-linguistics, as well as to language teachers."--Jacket.

Making Requests by Chinese EFL Learners
Making Requests by Chinese EFL Learners

Author: Vincent X. Wang

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2011-05-10

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 9027286809

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Requests, a speech act people frequently use to perform everyday social interactions, have attracted particular attention in politeness theories, pragmatics, and second language acquisition. This book looks at request behaviours in a significant EFL population – Chinese-speaking learners of English. It will draw on recent literature, such as politeness theories and cognitive models for interlanguage pragmatics development, as well as placing special emphasis on situational context and formulaic language to provide a more fine-grained investigation. A range of request scenarios has been specifically designed for this project, from common service encounters to highly face-threatening situations such as borrowing money and asking a favour of police officer. Our findings on Chinese-style pragmatic behaviours and patterns of pragmatic development will be of value to cross-cultural pragmatics researchers, TESOL professionals, and university students with an interest in this area of study.

The Pragmatics of Requests and Apologies
The Pragmatics of Requests and Apologies

Author: Elizabeth Flores Salgado

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 9027256187

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The purpose of this research is to analyse the pragmatic development of language groups at different proficiency levels and to investigate the relationship between interlanguage pragmatics and grammatical competence. For this study, 36 native Spanish speaking EFL learners at different proficiency levels were asked to respond in English to 24 different situations that called for the speech acts of request and apology. Results showed three important aspects. The first finding suggested that basic adult learners possess a pragmatic knowledge in their L1 that allows them to focus on the intended meaning and, in most cases, to assemble an utterance that conveys a pragmatic intention and satisfies the communicative demands of a social situation. The second finding revealed that there are two essential conditions to communicate a linguistic action: the knowledge of the relevant linguistic rules and the knowledge of how to use them appropriately and effectively in a specific context. The findings further suggested that advanced learners possess the grammatical knowledge to produce an illocutionary act, but they need to learn the specific L2 pragmatic conventions that enable them to know when to use these grammatical forms and under which circumstances.

Requests in American and British English
Requests in American and British English

Author: Ilka Flöck

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2016-08-25

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 902726676X

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This volume encompasses a thorough examination of the use of request strategies on two contrastive dimensions. On the cross-cultural dimension, it compares the use of British and American English request strategies in naturally occurring informal conversations. The conversational data are retrieved from the International Corpus of English (ICE) and the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English. On the methodological dimension, it systematically compares request strategies and their frequency distributions in the conversational data to questionnaire-based requests. Highlighting various instrument-induced effects, the volume challenges the validity of one of the most widely used and accepted data collection tools in pragmatics research, the DCT. The extensive data analysis contained in the volume includes a wide range of linguistic variables including mitigating and aggravating modification strategies and their interaction with head act directness levels. While it focuses on the first-pair part, the book also offers an analysis of request responses from a cross-cultural perspective. The findings of the study contribute new insights to research on requests, politeness, variational pragmatics, and general research methodology.

Interlanguage Request Modification
Interlanguage Request Modification

Author: Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2012-04-11

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 902727472X

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This is the first edited volume dedicated specifically to interlanguage request modification. It is a collection of empirical studies carried out by an international array of scholars which provides insights for researchers, graduate students and language teachers on patterns of interlanguage request modification in a range of research contexts and linguistic/cultural settings. The research in this volume takes the reader from a consideration of interlanguage request modification in naturally-occurring e-mail data, through to elicited data from e-DCT questionnaires on cyber-consultations, to the interactive oral discourse of requests in open role-plays. As a whole, the contributions incorporate research with learners from a range of proficiency levels and from diverse linguistic/cultural backgrounds while the chapters individually examine developmental aspects of interlanguage request modification, requests in electronic contexts, comparative learner/native speaker requests, and instructional effects on mitigation. The book will undoubtedly become an important reference for researchers and teachers not only in the field of pragmatics but also in second language acquisition, language teaching, (socio-)linguistics and discourse analysis.

Pragmatics in English Language Learning
Pragmatics in English Language Learning

Author: Nicola Halenko

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-10-06

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 110884152X

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This volume examines the second language pragmatic development of international learners of English inside and outside the classroom.

Politeness through the Prism of Requests, Apologies and Refusals
Politeness through the Prism of Requests, Apologies and Refusals

Author: Milica Savic

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-03-25

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1443858579

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The challenges that EFL learners, teachers and teacher educators are facing today have increased considerably with the comparatively new role of English as the lingua franca of the modern world. For both learners and teachers, responding to these new demands involves mastering a broader set of communication skills and a wider range of competencies in English, L2 pragmatic competence being only one of them, albeit an extremely significant one. With this in mind, Politeness through the Prism of Requests, Apologies and Refusals explores various aspects of Serbian EFL learners’ (future EFL teachers’) pragmatic knowledge and metapragmatic awareness, both as elements of their communicative competence and as tools they can use to support their own students’ L2 pragmatic development. In addition to examining the language strategies they resort to in different communicative contexts and the reasoning behind their speech act strategy choice, this book also investigates the use of intonation to express and interpret pragmatic meanings. As one of the first steps towards assembling the complex jigsaw puzzle representing the pragmatic competence of Serbian learners of English, the book will be of considerable interest to researchers investigating aspects of L2 pragmatics in the speech of EFL learners, especially those with Slavic L1 backgrounds. Additionally, in offering an insight into the numerous challenges that future language professionals, including EFL teachers, face in the process of mastering L2 speech acts, the book will also be relevant to university EFL lecturers and teacher trainers.