A Study Of College Students’ Request Speech Act From The Perspective Of Interlanguage Pragmatics

In the process of the second language learning,the learners form a language system which is between the native language and the target language.This system is called interlanguage,which is developed with the learning period.It is permeable,dynamic and systematic.In the 1980 s,the Interlanguage Pragmatics published by Kasper and Blum-Kulka marks the beginning of this discipline.It is the crossdisciplinary study of pragmatics and second language learning.Recently,interlanguage pragmatics becomes the mainstream of pragmatic study.The domestic study focused on the macroscopic discussion,such as the description of interlanguage’s features,the commentary of theory,the reason of its formation,interlanguage pragmatic transfer,pragmatic competence and the instruction in teaching.And the domestic research studied the factors affecting pragmatic competence,the types of interlanguage errors and the cognitive study of interlanguage pragmatics.Then,after the 1980 s,speech acts increasingly became one of the central topics in the field of interlanguage pragmatics.But the relative research mainly focused on the politeness or the influence on the foreign language teaching,and the analysis of common speech acts in daily life was rare,so it led to the narrowness of study.In the social communication,people often use request speech act to ask somebody to do something.It’s a common kind of speech act which are used widely by people,and that means the request speech act is valuable to be studied.Therefore,this thesis uses the interlanguage pragmatics and request speech act theory as the theoretical framework to study the request speech acts of Chinese college students.In essence,college student’ English is a system of interlanguage between Chinese and native English.At the same time,their request strategies may decide whether the listener can realize this request.So,this thesis is mainly to study the following three questions:(1)What are the characteristics of college students’ request speech sequence?(2)What are the characteristics of college students’ request speech modification?(3)What is the distribution of college students’ request strategies and how do social distance and power affect them?According to Blum-Kulka’s study,there are three main factors which influence the request strategy-social distance,power and imposition.And this thesis design a new questionnaire which depends on Blum-Kulka’s questionnaire in CCSARP.He proposed the different parameters of social distance,power and imposition.The thesis studied how social distance and power affect college students’ request strategies.So,the questionnaire mixed all the variables into nine situations:(+P,=D);(+P.-D);(-P,=D);(-P,+D);(=P,-D);(=P,+D);(-P,-D);(+P,=D);(=P,=D).It is composed of two parts.Part one is the multiple choice questions(MCQ).There are nine request situations in part one,and each situation has nine options.These nine options are the nine request strategies.The participants check the best strategy which they think is the most suitable request to express their thoughts.This part is designed to study the distribution of request strategies and the factors.And part two is the discourse completion test(DCT).There are new nine situations,and the students should write the suitable request speech act in the blank for each situation.This part is to study the characteristics of request sequence,modification and strategies.So this thesis collects the quantitative data firstly,then it uses the qualitative method to analyze the rules of college students’ request sequence,the characteristics of their request modifications and the factors affecting request strategies.As for the first question about the sequence of requests,the research shows that the college students prefer to use alerters to attract the listener’s attention.The most frequently used is address forms such as name or the identity.Then,head act is necessary for all the requests.This part shows the main point of request directly.And some students choose to use supportive moves to explain the reason or the present condition of the request.Most of them are used to apply pre-supportive moves.Therefore,the college students’ favorite sequence pattern is the combination of “alerters + supportive moves + head act”.In terms of the second question regarding the modifications,the internal modifications are included in the head acts.The hedges and the subjective markers are used as lexical and phrasal downgraders,and the syntactic downgraders are shown by the expressions like “Would you mind…?” “Could you please…?” or “Are you willing to…?”.The lexical and phrasal upgraders often occur in the situation where the speaker has a high power.And the external modifications are often used to explain the reason,inquire the condition and willingness,to show the obligation,expectation,gratitude,apology,trust,praise and award.They can let the listener feel the politeness and improve the possibility of realizing the request.In respect to the questions for request strategies,the amount of students who choose to use direct strategies,conventional indirect strategies and non-conventional indirect strategies are similar.Among them,the mood derivable,the want statement,the query preparatory and the strong hints are their favorite subtypes.Also,the directness of strategies is in proportion to the degree of social distance and power.When the social distance is high or the power is low,the speaker prefers to use direct strategy.And if the speaker’s power is higher or the social distance is lower than the listener,he would choose non-conventional indirect strategy.When the social distance or the power is equal between them,the speaker would like to choose conventional indirect strategy.In this research,the participants are fifty college students from Ji Lin University.This thesis tries the best to create 18 real situations the students might encounter in their daily life,but it is unavoidable to have limitations in the comparation with the result in the real circumstance.Therefore,the future study can design a more comprehensive and practical questionnaire.Only this kind of survey can make the participants feel they are in the real communication,and the situation may stimulate them to make more valuable results.Furthermore,the future study can apply other research instruments to collect both oral and writing data.