A Pragmatic Study On The Variations Of Request Modification In English

Speech act theory,as a major branch of pragmatics,lays a solid foundation for the development of pragmatics.As one of the commonest speech acts,requests have aroused intense attention and triggered a series of studies.These studies have deepened our understanding of the language itself and shed light on contrastive language studies and foreign language learning and teaching.However,there are three limitations in the existing related research:(1)the insufficient investigation of the variability of request patterns;(2)the insufficient research on native speakers' request behavior;and(3)the lack of authenticity of language data being explored.Taking these into consideration,the present study is designed to reveal how native English speakers modify their requests in daily life by adopting a corpus-based approach.It aims to answer the following four research questions:(1)How does formality affect request modification?(2)How does contingency affect request modification?(3)How does power relationship affect request modification?(4)How does gender affect request modification?In order to answer the research questions,the present study chose 10 episodes from six TV serials as the corpus source.The duration of time of the episodes in total is 470 minutes and there are 1975 requests picked.It was found that:(1)The use of upgraders in formal situations is more frequent than in informal settings,while in informal situations the use of downgraders is more frequent than in formal settings when performing a request.(2)In noncontingent situations,upgraders are used more frequently than in contingent settings.(3)With the increasing of social power,the preference for downgraders decreases.(4)The females show a stronger tendency to use downgraders while the males show a stronger tendency to use upgraders.The present study has theoretical and practical implications.Theoretically,it deepens our understanding of the linguistic behavior of native English speakers and enriches the research categories of Variational Pragmatics.It could also shed light on contrastive language studies and second language acquisition research.Practically,the discussion on variations of native English speakers' request modification has implications for the compilation of foreign language teaching materials and classroom teaching practice.