A Comparative Study On Use Of Request Strategies And Modifications

Since the advent of the concept of pragmatic competence, researchers are increasingly recognizing the importance of aspects of pragmatics in second language training program and focusing on interlanguage pragmatic studies. Of the main concern of interlanguage pragmatic studies is examining the production and comprehension of speech acts. As a common interpersonal speech act, request has attracted much research interest. From the studies on request by Chinese learners of English, we can find some studies have examined the learners’ choice of request strategy, not paying more attention to their choice of modification. In terms of subject, the studies which focus on business English learners are limited. For Chinese Business English learners, to be pragmatically competent is of great importance in their future commercial activities. How they perform the requests can reflect their pragmatic competence to some extent.The present study focused on request production. A total of 800 request expressions were collected from 50 English native speakers and 50 Chinese business English learners by using the instrument known as discourse completion test. Based on Blum Kulka’ typology of request strategies(1989)and Alcón’ typology of modifications(2005), the present study compared the use of request strategies and modifications by the two subject groups. The results from this study indicated:In respect to request strategy, conventional indirect strategy is most extensively used by the two subject groups among the main request strategies. In respect to direct strategy, the business English learners overuse this strategy in comparison with the English native speakers and the difference is statistically significant. As for conventional indirect strategy, the business English learners underuse it as compared with the English native speakers and show a relatively restrict repertoire in terms of its formula types, for example, the expressions like “Is it possible…?” “Do you think…?” are seldom used by them. In terms of non-conventional indirect strategy, the business English learners overuse this strategy in comparison with the English native speakers and the difference is statistically significant. For combination of strategies, the number of the use of this strategy by both subject groups is small and no significant difference is revealed.In respect to internal modification, both subject groups do not employ intensifiers. The internal modifications “opener” and “downtoner” are less used by the Chinese business English learners than the English native speakers and statistically significant differences are revealed. Additionally, although the difference between the two subject groups is not statistically significant in terms of the use of attention getter, the learners show a pragmatic deviation from the English native speakers, for example, they misuse the terms like “teacher” and “student” as address terms. In respect to external modification, both subject groups employ grounders extensively to modify the requests. As compared with the English native speakers, the Chinese business English learners underuse “please” and “promise” and statistically significant differences are revealed. In addition, the learners use politeness marker “please” with direct strategies more commonly than the English native speakers.In the present study, it is argued that the possible reasons leading to the results are L1 pragmatic transfer, cultural influence as well as the learners ’lack of pragmatic input and so on. It is suggested that to raise learners’ pragmatic awareness, enhance pragmatic input and provide more practice and explicit feedback to pragmatic language can facilitate the development of pragmatic competence of the Chinese business English learners.