Direct Request In Chinese

The speech act of request has been richly documented. Most studies focus on native languages or second languages, using a DCT (Discourse Completion Test) questionnaire or role-play to obtain data. Studies report that according to the level of directness, request is of three categories: direct request, conventionally indirect request and unconventional request, with the latter two commonly referred to as indirect request and heavily examined in Chinese (Zhang & Wang, 1997), leaving direct request seldom explored. The purpose of this thesis is a further study on Zhang and Wang (1997). Different from previous studies, including Zhang and Wang (1997), which use a DCT or role-plays to elicit data, this thesis collects data from a specific dialog setting, the clinic, observes and tape-records naturally ongoing conversations between doctors and patients.Elaborate analyses of the collected data indicate that in the special setting of doctor-patient dialogs, doctors tend to employ more direct request strategies; this may be caused by both the higher power position on the part of the doctor and the economic principle of speech. In overall, in performing their direct request upon patients, doctors basically observe three characteristics: (1) They adopt three common subcategories of direct request which follow a sequence of mood derivable, locution derivable and hedged performative; (2) the usual frequencies of request perspective are implicit, hearer dominance and speaker dominance; (3) internal modification and external modification are usually used to mitigate the imposition of direct request, which evidence that the direct request of doctor-patient is not impolite.A continuation as well as a remedy of Zhang and Wang's (1997) study, this thesis helps to strongly showcase the fact that indirect strategies are not observed on all occasions, especially in specific Chinese speech contexts; on the contrary, under special circumstances, direct request strategies are more appropriate and desirable.Evidentially, these findings are indispensable supplements to the pragmatic competence of, especially those Chinese second language learners.To verify the findings and conclusions in the present study, it is helpful to launch more studies by extending direct request data in other specific settings such as traffic police-driver, and teacher-student and so on dialogs.