A Contrastive Study Request Between China’s Dongxiang Minority Language And Lanzhou Dialect

Many languages in today’s world are endangered. One of these languages is Dongxiangminority language (DML) in Northwest China, which has received considerable attention in recent years from linguists, language planners, and policy makers and so on, regarding whether and how it should be maintained or revitalized. This study is dedicated to DML research from the perspective of cross-cultural pragmatics. As far as cross-cultural pragmatics is concerned, Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) conducted by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) is the distinguished one. CCSARP was initiated to investigate the cross-cultural variation in the adoption of pragmatic strategies in speech acts. In the course of the research, the researchers of CCSARP formed the realization patterns of requests and apologies in several languages, which are widely adopted as a coding scheme concerning the comparison of requests, apologies, and other speech acts home and abroad. In China, most of the empirical study has focused on the comparison between a Chinese speech act and another foreign language speech act. Little attention is paid to a contrastive study on a speech act between an endangered language and Chinese or a dialect. Furthermore, previous studies of request have been mainly carried out by means of written Discourse Completion Tasks (DCT)(Beebe,1985). As such, the present paper conducts a contrastive study between DML and Lanzhou dialect (LD) on pragmatic strategies in making a request by means of a role-play, which can help to procure the semi-natural language data. The CCSARP model and the blueprint modified by the researcher’s supervisor are taken as basic reference for this research.By means of qualitative method, this research aims to address four questions. First, what similarities and differences are displayed in the requesting strategies of DML under higher pressure comparing with lower pressure? Second, what similarities and differences are displayed in the requesting strategies of LD under higher pressure comparing with lower pressure? Third, what similarities and differences are displayed in the requesting strategies of both DML and LD under the corresponding higher pressure and the corresponding lower pressure? Fourth, what are the reasons for these similarities and differences displayed in the requesting strategies of both DML and LD? In order to answer these four questions, DML participants from Suonan village and LD participants from Xia Guanying village aging from ten to sixty-five years old were selected for the study. The participants that played in the role-play amounted to75in both DML and LD respectively. The participants were arranged into four groups:an elderly group, a middle-aged group, a young group and a child group. The gender ratio was1:1. Each of the participants was asked to play a role according to eighteen predesigned situations which were sorted into higher pressure situations and lower pressure situations based on the difficulties the speakers were about to be confronted with in request. The entire procedure of the role-play was videotaped and tape-recorded and the data were then transcribed for the research by DML natives selected from college students. A DML linguistic expert was invited to proofread the transcribed version. With descriptive statistics, the data were analyzed and the results were discussed.The results of the analyses indicated that:Firstly, when DML participants made a request under higher pressure comparing with lower pressure, difference in pragmatic strategies was manifested in the use of alerters. DML participants tended to use kinship terms under higher pressure, and name terms under lower pressure. DML participants were inclined to use hearer-oriented strategies, imperatives, down-graders, and supportive moves functioning as grounder under both higher pressure and lower pressure. Secondly, when LD participants made a request under higher pressure comparing with lower pressure, differences in pragmatic strategies were reflected in the use of alerters, perspectives, and forms of head act. For example, LD participants favored to use interrogatives under higher pressure, and both imperatives and interrogatives under lower pressure. Similarities in pragmatic strategies were shown in the use of lexical strategies and supportive moves. Thirdly, when DML participants and LD participants made a request under the corresponding higher pressure, differences in pragmatic strategies were manifested in the use of alerters, perspectives, and forms of head act. For example, DML participants employed imperatives while LD participants adopted interrogatives. Both DML participants and LD participants tended to use down-graders and supportive moves functioning as grounder. Under the corresponding lower pressure, differences in pragmatic strategies were shown in the use of alerters and forms of head act. For example, DML participants preferred to use name terms while LD participants tended to use both name terms and combinations of the above. Similarities in pragmatic strategies were reflected in the use of perspectives, lexical strategies and supportive moves. The same request sequence was identified in both DML and LD when a request was made. Fourthly, the choice of pragmatic strategies in making a request was closely related to Islamic culture reflected in DML and Confucian culture in LD. For example, the use of imperatives in DML under higher pressure comparing with lower pressure was relevant to the concept of equality in Islamic culture while the adoption of interrogatives in LD stemmed from the collectivism in Confucian culture.