A Study Of Requests In Telephone Conversations Between Peers In Mandarin—a Conversation Analytic Approach

Different from the past researches on requests from the viewpoints of pragmatics,sociolinguistics,second language acquisition etc.,the present study adopts Conversation Analysis as its research method.Proposed and developed by Harvey Sacks together with his colleagues Emanuel A.Schegloff and Gail Jefferson in 1960s in the U.S.A.,Conversation Analysis aims to reveal the interaction order through the observation of talks-in-interaction.It requires the data for analysis must be audio or video recorded data collected from mundane conversations or from talks in institutional settings,like hospital,courts,etc.,and the data must be transcribed according to Jeffersonian transcription conventions.The research tools provided by this method are turn-taking,repair,sequence organization,preference,turn design,and story-telling.Each of them can be used as an angle from which to have a close look at the real conversations going on in our everyday life.This thesis chooses requests as the object of research and analyzes this specific social action in terms of sequence organization and turn design within the field of Conversation Analysis.Based on the data collection of 60 telephone conversations between peers in which requests are involved,this thesis makes a clear presentation of the trajectory of unfolding request sequence.It is found that neither requests nor responses to requests are seldom directly made.The availability of the requestee and whether it is convenient for the requestee to fulfill the task requested are all taken into the requester's consideration before the turn of requests comes out.This is what is called pre-expansion of request sequence which comes before the first pair part of the base sequence of requests in the thesis.Similarly,the requestee is equally cautious before he/she gives his/her response to the request.It is common for the requestee to check how much effort is needed to do the request before an acceptance or a rejection is given to the request.This is implemented by insert sequence that appears between the first pair part and the second pair part of the base sequence of requests.Another observation is that the second pair part is not the sequence closing turn of request sequence.Instead,the sequence is post-expanded into one or more turns to close the sequence or to do more social actions,such as showing appreciation,giving advice,pursuing the request etc.,before the completion of the sequence.Besides the above sequence organization of requests,the turn designs of requests and its responses are also investigated.It is found that "Imperative + particle?(?),?,?","Opening 'request' words initiated imperative+?(?),?,?",and"interrogatives" are the major linguistic forms of requests between peers in Mandarin Chinese telephone conversations.What is more,accounts,i.e.explanations for requests,are common before or after the utterances of requesting.Meanwhile,prefaces and delays frequently appear before the TCU of requesting.When the turn design of request response is examined,it is shown that the turn may be prefaced by particles "?" or "?" or "?" in accord with the gradient of contingency of the specific request when the response is an acceptance.While the positive responses to requests are short and direct,the negative response is implemented with turn initial prefaces and delays,accounts or advices.