Requests:a Cross-cultural Pragmatic Study Between Tibetan And Chineses In The Northwest

The pragmatic characteristics, similarities and differences between Tibetan and Chinese requests are investigated in the present study. According to the analytical patterns of requests in the’Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP, Blum-Kulka et al.1989)’, the cross-cultural empirical study on alerters, head acts and supportive moves of Tibetan and Chinese are conducted. In terms of the view by Brown and Levinson (1987) and the study by Takimoto (2005), pressure refers to the degree of a particular Face Threatening Act (FTA) which threatens speaker’s face. There are two kinds of pressures with considering the three factors (social distance, relative power and absolute ranking of impositions) together:higher pressure and lower pressure. Requests performed by Tibetan and Han college students in higher pressure situations are explored in the present study. Because the present study focuses on the pragmatic facet (sentence meaning in real context) of Tibetan and Chinese without involving pronunciation and grammar, Tibetan versions of questionnaires are translated literally by three native speakers and the best ones are selected and revised by three native Amdo speakers who are doctoral graduate students of Lanzhou University.The present study includes two phases:oral role play and questionnaire. The first phase is oral role play which aims to collect semi-natural utterances in both languages by Tibetan and Han peasants (including all age groups and both genders) performing in the situations designed by the researcher. The second phase aims to collect data from college students of both nationalities for quantitative analysis. Because of fund shortage, subjects who involve in the second stage change into college students. Two kinds of questionnaires (in which "hearers" are young and old males) are designed according to semi-natural utterances of young Tibetan and Han peasants, interviews and discourse completion test (DCT) for Tibetan and Han college students and done by220Tibetan and220Han college students with equal number of males and females. Then the valid data is classified and processed by SPSS11.5.There are three research questions of the present study.(1) Do speakers’ genders affect speakers’request strategies in the same language? If they do, explain them in detail.(2) Do hearers’ages affect speakers’request strategies in the same language? If they do, explain them in detail.(3) Are there any significant differences between Tibetan and Chinese requests? If there are, explain them in detail.Results of the present study are concluded here.(la) There is no significant difference between Tibetan male and female speakers’request strategies:most speakers prefer to use titles and one-way addresses to start conversations; most speakers use interrogatives and imperatives; most speakers use supportive moves before or after head acts to give reasons as grounders.(1b) There are significant differences between Chinese male and female speakers’requests except alerters: Chinese speakers also prefer to use titles and one-way addresses to start conversations; more female speakers use imperatives and declaratives and supportive moves to give reasons as grounders.(2a) Ages of Tibetan "hearers" do affect requests:more titles and one-way addresses used by most speakers to old males; most speakers use interrogatives and imperatives to young and old males with almost equal interrogatives and more imperatives to the old; more supportive moves as grounders to old males.(2b) Ages of Chinese "hearers" do affect requests:more titles and one-way addresses used by most speakers to old males; most speakers use imperatives and declaratives to young and old males with almost equal imperatives and more declaratives to old males; more supportive moves as grounders to old males.(3) There is significant difference of syntactic strategies between Tibetan and Chinese:most Tibetan young speakers use imperatives and interrogatives while Chinese speakers use imperatives and declaratives; there is no significant difference of alerters and external modifications between Tibetan and Chinese.Then social reasons which cause the results such as status of Tibetan and Chinese males and females, the young and the old and the homological relationship of cultures and languages of Tibetan and Chinese are analyzed and discussed in detail. Although there are limitations such as subjects changing and just involving two age groups (the young and the old) in questionnaires, the present study could give some contributions to further pragmatic cross-cultural study between Tibetan and Chinese.