VietNam national University, ha Noi College of foreign languages

Department of post- graduate studies

Final assignment
Cross-cultural communication Literature review of requests

Supervisor: Do Mai Thanh, MA Student: Pham Thi Hong Van Date of birth: 19th January, 1982 Group: K19 D (English)

Ha Noi, 2011

Previous studies on requests

The studies of requests have been considered one of the main communicative acts and among the most sensitive areas of politeness in human interactions. To date, there are many investigations about the realization patterns of requests, classifications and factors affecting the choice of polite requests. A request is an act which gets the addressee to do or not to do something and can be seen as "a directive. Directives are "acts which attempt to get the hearer to do something" (Searle, 1969: 71). Another definition of request from Trosborg

(1995:75) is defined as " an illocutionary act where a speaker conveys to a hearer that he/she wants the hearer to perform an act which is for the benefit of the speaker". Thus, Trosborg emphasized the benefit of speaker and the cost of the addressee and this helps to distinguish requests from other speech acts. Based on Blum-Kulka (1984), Blum-Kulka at al (1989) and Ellis (1994), a request consists of three parts: alerter (an element

which precedes the request to give attention to the hearer), supportive moves (external modification occurring either before or after a head act) and head act ( the core of request sequence). There are different classifications of request types from different perspectives. First, Evrin-Trips (1976) proposed 6 types of request: need statements, imperatives, imbedded imperatives, permission directives, non-explicit question

directives and hints. Next, in CCSARP, nine types provided for the head acts of requests are classified according to scale of indirectness and strategy types ( Blum- Kulka, House and

Kasper, 1989, Ellis (1994) as follows: ( i): Direct level( Mood derivables, performatives, Hedged performatives, obligation statements, obligation statements ) ; (ii): conventionally indirect level ( suggestory formulate, querry- preparatory); (iii) nonconventionally indirect level ( strong hints, mild hints). Types of requests are also classified according to person perspectives including hearer- oriented, speaker-oriented, speaker and hearer-oriented and impersonal (Blum-Kulka& Olshtain, 1984: 203). Further, Blum-Kulka, Danet and Gherson (1985: 118) state that requests vary in goals from the least coercive requests (i.e.

ask for information, permission, goods) to the most coercive (i.e. action) In terms of influential factors of choice of an appropriate polite request, many researchers share the same view. Social cultural factors might play a role in the use of a certain polite strategy (Blum-Kulka & House, 1989; Cenoz & Valencia, 1996;

Eslamirasekh, 1993). Brown and Levinson found that social distance (D), power ( P) and ranking of imposition ( R) are

determining factors. Requests are also subject to internal and external modification. Internal modification takes the form of downgraders and upgraders. External modification consists of supportive moves (Ellis, 1994; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984). Finally, Trosborg (1987) and N. Quang (1999) suggest 14 types of lexico modal markers which create different degrees of politeness including consultative device, understater, hedge, downtoner, intensifier, subjectiveser, commitment upgrader, cajoler, appealer, politeness marker, grounder, sweetener, disarmer and cost minimizer. As we can see, a request can be changed from one politeness strategy to the other via the changes of lexico-modal markers.

During the last decade, requests are one of the most commonly researched speech acts in both cross-cultural and interlanguage studies. Cross-cultural pragmatic researchers analyze speech acts across a range of languages to find common

characteristics (Chen, 2007; Eslamirasekh, 1993; Rimert & Kobayashi, 1999). On the other hand, focusing on second language acquisition, many interlanguage researchers study differences and similarities that exist in carrying out

communication actions among language learners and native speakers of target languages. Hence, some authors have designed taxonomies that can be utilized to describe the features of the speakers' requests. The framework of the CrossCultural study of Speech Act Realization Project ( CCSARP), in which discourse completion tests ( DCTs) were used , is an example ( Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper, 1989). Some explored the speech act of request in English (Francis 1997; Kim, 1995; Parent, 2002). For instance, Kim (1995) found that non native speakers deviated from native English speaker norms and produced more direct or less direct requests than expected in certain scenarios. Among the above studies, only Francis (1997) and Parent (2002) attempted to examine developmental pragmatics by comparing data from learners at
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various levels of proficiency.

Francis (1997) analysed the

production of requests by ESL learners at different proficiency levels and found that participants preferred direct strategies. It can be concluded that the results from interlanguage studies of requests show that learners fails to respond with correct speech act ( sociopragmatic failure) and learners responds with the correct speech act but with the wrong linguistic means ( pragmalinguistic failure). To date, in Vietnam there are some studies on this speech act ( i.e : Thanh, 2000; Yen, 2007; Thu, 2007; Thuy, 2008; Tam, 2007) In the work "Gender and politeness strategy in requesting, Yen (2007) carried out an investigation to answer two questions: "Do British males and females differ in using politeness strategy in requesting? Are female speakers more polite than male speakers?" .The participants in this study were only 10 British students: 5 females-5 males. Another cross-cultural study of request is that of Pham Thi Phuong Thuy (2008). She examined whether contextual factors, learners' levels of proficiency and gender could affect
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pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English in the realization of requests. Lastly, the work "Request by Vietnamese learners of English" proposed by Ha Cam Tam (2007) is worth reading. The participants in this study included three groups of students: Australian people, Vietnamese learners of English and

Vietnamese people who did not learn English. She investigated how the forms of request were different in each group in terms of the use of strategy, internal modifications and external modifications and how these forms varied in relation to the variables of Power, Distance and Ranking of imposition. The findings show that informants from both cultures have different evaluations of parameters P, D and R. They use different strategies in forming their requests. The reason is that Vietnamese speakers lack the pragmatic knowledge of the appropriate strategy. Then, she gave some pedagogy

implications to gain pragmatic knowledge in the process of communication. As we know, politeness is a determining factor to contribute to the effective interaction and friendly, lively atmosphere in EFL classroom. Speech act of request is considered as a sensitive
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act because it is easy to threaten hearer's face. Therefore, it is necessary to have further studies of request in EFL teaching class. We need to give solutions to preserve students' face from teacher's request and propose some face-saving strategies in English class. I think this is a gap we should fill in. (1100 words)
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References:
1. Brown, P. & Levinson S (1987): Politeness: some universal in language usage. Cambridge University Press 2. Blum-Kulka, S., & House, J. (1989).Cross-cultural and situational variation in requesting behaviour. Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp.123-154). Norwood, NJ: Ablex

3. Blum-Kulka, S.& Olshtain, E. (1984). Requests and apologies. A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns CCSARP. Applied linguistics, 5, 196-213 4. Blum-Kulka, S, Danet, B & Gerson, R. (1985).The language of requesting in Isareli socity. In: J. Forgas (Ed). Language and social situation. New York, NY: Springer Verlag, 113-141 5. Cenoz, J., & Valencia, J. (1996). Cross-cultural communication and interlanguage pragmatics: American vs. European requests, pragmatics and language learning 7, 47-53 6. Chen, S. (2007). Interlanguage requests: A cross-cultural study of English and Chinese. The Linguistics Journal, 2(2), 3252. 7. Ellis, R. (1994).The studies of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 8. Ervin-Trip, Susan.1976. Is Sybil there?. The structure of some American English directives. Language in Society, 5, 25-66 9. Eslamirasekh, Z. (1993). A cross-cultural comparison of requestive speech act realization patterns in Persian and American English. Pragmatic and Language Learning, 4, 85-10 10. Francis, C. (1997). Talk to me!The development of request strategies in nonnative speakers of English. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 13(2), 23-40. 11. Kim, J. (1995). "Could you calm down more?": Requests and Korean ESL learners. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 11(2), 67-82.

12. Olshtain, E., & Cohen, A .D. (1991).Teaching speech behavior to nonnative speakers. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 154169). Boston: Heinle and Heinle Publishers. 13. Parent, M. P. (2002). The production of requests by Catalan learners of English: situational and proficiency level effects. ATLANTIS, 2, 147-168. 14. Rinnert, C., & Kobayashi, H. (1999). Requestive hints in Japanese and English .Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 1173-1201 15. Searle, J.R(1969). Speech acts, Cambridge Univeristy Press. 16. Trosborg, A. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints, and apologies. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 17. Tam, H.C (2007). Requests by Vietnamese Learners of English. Ph.D Dissertation: VNU-CFL Hanoi, Vietnam 18.. Thu, N.T. (2007): An American- Vietnamese cross-cultural study of politeness strategies used in making requests. - MA thesis, Vietnam national University, Ha Noi. 19. Thanh, D.M (2000). Some English-Vietnamese cross-cultural differences in requesting MA thesis, Vietnam national

University, Ha Noi. 20. Yen, N.Q (2007): Gender and politeness strategies in requesting- MA thesis, Vietnam national University, Ha Noi

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