| The present study assesses pragmalinguistic knowledge of learners of Japanese as a second/foreign language in terms of linguistic politeness in non-native speaker requests in Japanese. Some dimensions of the participants' evaluations were taken into consideration and the learners' evaluations were compared with native speakers'. Significant differences were found in the evaluations between the learners and the native speakers. Most of those differences depended on speech style; speech style was a significant factor in the evaluations as well. The intermediate learners perceived little difference in the degree of politeness in the stimuli, whereas the advanced learners' evaluations showed trends similar to those of the native speakers'. Appropriate use of honorifics, formal forms, donative auxiliary verbs, and formulaic expressions positively influenced the evaluations. However, the inappropriate use of honorifics and informal style, and disfluency caused mainly by hesitation markers had mixed effects on the evaluations. In some cases, the learners were negatively influenced, but the native speakers were positively influenced. In other cases, reversed results were obtained.; To further the understanding of the learners' pragmatic knowledge, a sociopragmatic assessment was conducted as well. Significant differences were found among participant groups in their evaluations of a speaker's right to make requests and a hearer's obligation to comply with the requests. However, those differences depended on the request type. In addition, significant correlations were found between the participants' pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic assessments, which indicates a relationship between the evaluations of linguistic politeness and degree of imposition of the requests. |
