RESEARCH ON REQUEST STRATEGIES IN
PRAGMATIC STUDY OF INDONESIAN EFL LEARNERS
Eka Sugeng Ariadi
Graduate Program of English Department
The State University of Surabaya
Abstract: Learning attentively about communicative competence, particularly
comprehending pragmatic competence is needed by Indonesian teachers
and learners. One of the most important strategy in pragmatic
competence is request strategy. Recently, request strategies
in pragmatic teaching and learning process have
been explored intensively in the worldwide,
whereas it is still not sufficient findings in Indonesia. Accordingly, this research aims at
revealing the
use of request strategies and analysing the variant types and
frequency of it based on the social power and social distance at different school
grades in Indonesia. A
Discourse Completion Test (DCT) instruments was used to
elicit the data related to the request strategies. The
data were analysed by using SPSS (version 20.0) for frequency analysis and chi square test. The participants were
randomly selected from SMP, SMA, Undergraduate and Graduate learners. The
findings showed that Indonesian learners tend to use
indirect strategies than direct strategies,
the higher grade of the leaners the more they use indirect requesting.
On the other findings, the social power and distance of the learners is similarly between SMP and SMA learners, further undergraduate and
graduate learners. Hence, based on the discussion above, the researcher asserts the important of
incorporating pragmatic principles to teacher’s methods of
teaching English in classrooms.
Keywords: pragmatics,
request strategy, Indonesian learners
1. Introduction
English as a foreign language in Indonesia has forced the students to learn
more seriously about it, including pragmatics. By studying pragmatics, it is a
hope that they face less barriers in communicating with foreign people. As it
is already stated by Yule (1996) that there are four areas which pragmatics is concerned
with; pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning, pragmatics is the study of
contextual meaning, pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than
is said and pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance.
In a nutshell, second/foreign language learners will be able to have smooth
communication when they have good understanding on pragmatics aspect and its
components. One component in pragmatics is speech act. Yule (1996) says that actions
performed via utterances are generally called speech acts and, in English, are
commonly given more speciļ¬c labels, such as apology, complaint, compliment,
invitation, promise, or request.
Since this study reveals about the request strategy, Culpeper & Archer
(2008) state that requests are a particularly well-studied speech act in this
field, and are often related to a scale of directness, with different degrees
of directness being correlated with various situations and cultures. Their
statements were based on Searle’s (1969) theory that the classification of illocutionary acts (i.e., representatives, directives,
expressives, commissives, and
declarations), researchers let requests fall under the second category,
that of directives, which have been regarded as an attempt to get hearer to do an
act which speaker wants hearer to do, and which it is not obvious that hearer
will do in the normal course of events or of hearer's own accord.
Based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory, requests are Face
Threatening Acts (FTAs), since a speaker is imposing her/his will on the hearer
and they propose that when confronted with the need to perform a FTA, the
individual must choose between performing the FTA in the most direct and
efficient manner or attempting to mitigate the effect of the FTA on the
hearer's face. Blum-Kulka & Olshtain (1984) said that there have been several attempts in theoretical, as well as empirical work on the speech act
of request to set up a classification of request strategies that would form a
cross-linguistically valid scale of directness. On theoretical
grounds, there seem
to be three
major levels of directness
that can be expected to be manifested universally by requesting
strategies; a) direct requests, b) conventionally indirect requests, and b)
non- conventionally indirect requests.
Jalilifar (2009) gives some additional explanations that in direct
requests, the illocutionary force of the utterance is indicated by grammatical,
lexical, or semantic means (for example, "Leave me alone!"). In conventionally
indirect statements express the illocution via fixed linguistic convention in
the speech community (for example, "How about cleaning up?").
Non-conventionally indirect requests require the addressee to compute the
illocution from the interaction of the locution with its context (for example,
"The game is boring.").
Blum-Kulka & Olshtain (1984) have designed a combination of level of
directness and strategy types in A Cross-Cultural Study Of Speech Act
Realization Patterns (CCSARP) project as follows:
a. Direct level
1. Mood derivable: Utterances in which the grammatical mood of the verb
signals illocutionary force (for example, "Leave me alone!").
2. Performatives: Utterances in which the illocutionary force is explicitly
named (for example, "I tell you to leave me alone.")
3. Hedged performatives: Utterances in which naming of the illocutionary force
is modified by hedging expressions (for example, "I would like to ask you
to leave me alone.").
4. Obligation statements: Utterances which state the obligation of the hearer
to carry out the act (for example, "Sir, you'll have to move your
car.")
5. Want statements: Utterances which state the speaker's desire that the
hearer carries out the act (for example, "I want you to move your
car.").
b. Conventionally indirect level
6. Suggestory formulae: Utterances
which contain a suggestion to do something (for example, "How about cleaning
up?")
7. Query-preparatory: Utterances containing reference to preparatory
conditions (e.g. ability, willingness) as
conventionalized in any specific language (for example, "Would you mind
moving your car?").
c. Non-conventionally indirect level
8. Strong hints: Utterances containing partial reference to object or element
needed for the implementation of the act (for example, "The game is
boring.").
9. Mild hints: Utterances that make no reference to the request proper (or any
of its elements) but are interpretable as requests by context (for example,
"We've been playing this game for over an hour now.").
In a worldwide, the study of request aspect in part of speech act has
commonly discussed, especially dealing with pragmatics or cross-cultural communication
or interlanguage. In China, Yang’s (2009) findings revealed that there are significant
differences exist between Chinese and American graduate students in directness
and imposition of the request, and social distance in some social situations.
No significant differences were discovered in relation to relative power of the
hearer. Social distance, imposition of the request, and relative power were all
positively correlated with each other. In Malaysia, Youssef (2012) presents a
study of similarities and differences in the request strategies by Malaysian
and Libyan postgraduate students at USM. The study findings then give new
insights to the directness and requesting behaviors within Libyan and Malaysian
students and the challenges of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication.
Additionally, the result has cultural implications such as awareness of the
request strategies used in one culture compared to another culture, tackles the
ability of Libyan and Malay learners to apply requests in English and attempts
to provide explanations for pragmatic errors that Libyan and Malay learners may
perform.
In Indonesian context, there have been discussed in many fields related to
requests strategy. Sofwan & Rusmi’s (2011) research on male and female teachers
on Junior High School proved that most of the teachers utilized conventionally
indirect strategies, followed by direct strategies, and non-conventionally
indirect strategies. It was also found that the higher the rank of imposition,
the more indirect the request strategies will be. While Sari’s (2010) investigation
on female EFL learners of different ethnic groups performed similar request patterns
and the subjects’ ethnic backgrounds did
not correlate with their strategies, yet, their ethnic
backgrounds had correlation with the subjects' request modifications, and the
subjects’ request strategies and modifications did not correlate with social
distance and dominance. The information gained can be utilized as a basis for
integrating cultures and social dimensions between speakers and hearers into the
teaching of EFL as well as EIL to increase students’ intercultural and pragmatic
competence.
In accordance with the previous findings, there is not sufficient information
about the requests strategies utilization across different grades students. Hence,
this study concerns to investigate the usage of request strategies and its
implications by Indonesian EFL learners at various grades students; Junior High
School (henceforth SMP), Senior High School (henceforth SMA), undergraduate program
(henceforth S1) and graduate program (henceforth S2).
2. Methodology
The participants were two students of SMP, five students of SMA, three
students of S1, and three students of S2 who were recognized having high score of
English proficiency in their own grades. Thus, the participants were regarded
having enough understanding toward fulfilling the instruments. Discourse
Completion Test (henceforth DCT) was used as the merely instrument. There are twenty
four situations that the participants should respond writtenly and the
situations depict into two aspects; the relative power and social distance.
Further, this study took Jalilifar’s (2009) concept that the power variable is
treated as a ternary value, that is the hearer is either of lower status (+power),
interlocutors are of equal status (=power), or the hearer is of higher status
(-power). While the distance variable is treated as a binary value, that is interlocutors
either know each other (-distance) or they do not know each other (+distance).
The combination of these two social variables results in six possible
combinations, each realized in four situations which thus resulted in twenty
four situations as shown in the following table.
Table 1. Power (P) and Social Distance (SD) Combinations*
|
Combinations
|
P
|
SD
|
Situations
|
|
A
|
=
|
+
|
turning down the music; asking for a pen; taking a photo;
asking for an address
|
|
B
|
=
|
-
|
lending some money; asking for notes; asking for lotion;
taking care of a child
|
|
C
|
+
|
+
|
asking for a menu; asking to be quiet ; turning off the mobile
phone; fixing the computer
|
|
D
|
+
|
-
|
losing the window; presenting the paper asking for some
papers; staying more after store hours
|
|
E
|
-
|
+
|
asking for an interview; participating in the course;
rearranging the exam's day; giving a lift
|
|
F
|
-
|
-
|
exchanging the shirt; asking for an extension; being out of
work early; writing a letter
|
*(cf Jalilifar, 2009)
Blum-Kulka & Olshtain’s (1984) combination of level of directness and
strategy types in CCSARP was employed to describe the data, and in order to get
the frequency score and chi square score, the SPSS (version 20.0) was also used.
As stated by Jalilifar’s (2009) that the frequency analysis was conducted to
identify the proportion and percentage of request strategies used by the
participants in six combinations. While chi square test was performed in order
to establish whether the differences in the frequency of strategies made by participants
were statistically significant.
3. Findings and Discussion
In order to determine the type and frequency of request strategies, the
data gathered from the participants then were analyzed by using SPSS (version
20.0) in order to get the frequency of occurrence and percentage of each
category of strategies. The result is shown in table 2. However, the next step
was applying chi-square test in order to find the relationship between type and
frequency of request strategies. The result is figured out in table 3.
Table 2. Frequency and Percentage of Request Strategies by Learners
|
Request Strategies
|
SMP
|
SMA
|
S1
|
S2
|
|
Mood Derivable
|
|
|
|
|
|
Performative
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hedge
|
|
|
|
|
|
Obligation
|
|
|
|
|
|
Want Statement
|
|
|
|
|
|
Suggestory
|
|
|
|
|
|
Preparatory
|
|
|
|
|
|
Strong hints
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mild hints
|
|
|
|
|
The findings of this study provide some evidence of correlation between
learners' level of language proficiency and type of requesting. As illustrated
in table 2, conventional indirectness was the most frequent strategy by the
three groups of learners which was conveyed by only one indirect sub-strategy:
Query preparatory. Almost exclusively this strategy constituted more than half
of all requests produced by the learners.
Concerning the correlation between complexity of request strategies and
level of language proficiency in EFL learners, the findings of present study,
following other studies in this field (Harlow, 1990; Francis, 1997; Parent,
2002), support request development of learners from being direct to indirect
and from being simple to complex. On the one hand, there is a positive
correlation between the use of indirect strategy types and the English proficiency
level. In other words, the higher proficiency group use more indirect strategy
types (both conventionally and non-conventionally indirect strategy) than
learners with lower language proficiency.
On the other hand, complexity of request strategies is explained in terms
of direct strategies with forms that convey requestive force by purely
syntactic means, such as grammatical mood or an explicit performative verb. Due
to a strong concern with clarity, direct strategies may be considered as the
most efficiently and easily expressed utterances. But in conventionally
indirect strategies the relationship between the surface form of an utterance
and its underlying purpose is not
straightforward. Again,
requestive hints, as mentioned
by Weizman (1993), tend
to lack clarity and
the speaker exploits their
opacity while getting the hearer to carry out the implicitly requested act (p.
71). Other substantial differences
include lower learners' reliance on Imperative strategy and other groups'
tendencies for varieties of direct sub-strategies other than Imperative
strategy. It is likely that higher proficiency learners may have attempted to
use as many strategies as possible in order to compensate for their lack of L2
proficiency, resulting in the use of different types of requesting. In
contrast, the lower proficiency learners are probably not sufficiently
competent
to use as wide a variety of strategies as the proficient learners and thus
they mainly rely on Imperative strategy. In other words, linguistic ability
correlates with strategy use. The greater use of Imperative as the most direct
type of requesting by the low learners, as Harlow (1990) suggests, is also
probably due to the linguistic deficiency or perhaps lack of attention to the
rules of politeness (p. 335). They do not possess enough linguistic ability to
employ other types of direct request
such as Want
statement as frequent
as the higher
groups. So, it
may be claimed
that learners with
lower language proficiency show a particularly strong preference for
Imperative because this sub-strategy, especially in elided form, does not
demand high linguistic proficiency; it is formally very simple (e.g. Give me
the pen).
Insert tables 2 & 3 here
3.2 Question Two
Addressing the first part of the second research question, concerning
request strategies made by Iranian EFL learners and Australian native speakers
of English, the study presents the results of comparison between native and
non-native speakers. As indicated in table 4, all groups displayed a markedly
high frequency of conventionally indirect strategy conveyed by Preparatory
sub-strategy. However, while the mid and high groups displayed an inclination
toward the use of this particular strategy, the native group was characterized
by a more balanced use of conventional indirectness. The low group, on the
hand, extraordinarily used the most direct type of requesting, that is,
Imperative. The considerable use
of conventionally indirect
strategy by both
native and non-native
speakers may be
due to the influence of Western language usage with
regard to speech act theory. Previous studies (Searle, 1969; Leech, 1983) have
mentioned that indirect speech acts correlate with politeness in Western
cultures because Western language usage is fundamentally associated with
negative politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987).
The results of this study are consistent with the findings of previous
studies such as Byon (2004). First, they support the view that advanced
learners appear to develop greater sensitivity to the use of politeness
strategies in requesting than is seen in native speakers. Second, the study
supports Ellis’s (1994) idea that even advanced learners do not acquire fully native-like
ways of requesting.
On the one hand, the higher proficient learners in the present study employ
more conventionally indirect strategies than native speakers. On the other
hand, Brown and Levinson (1987) and Leech (1983) make a strong connection
between the indirectness and politeness, arguing that a higher degree of
indirectness shows more politeness. More specifically, Blum-kulka (1987,
cited in Marti,
2006, p.1839) reports
the most polite
strategies in English
are perceived to be conventionally indirect
ones. Therefore, by
greater use of
conventionally indirect strategies,
the higher proficient learners show
greater sensitivity to the use
of politeness strategies
in requesting. Overusing
conventionally indirect types of
requesting by high level learners may have to do with the fact that high levels
of grammatical competence do not ensure high levels of pragmatic competence.
However, the majority of studies which have looked at the relationship between
grammatical and pragmatic competence show that proficient learners seem to be
better at using speech act strategies (Trosborg, 1995), and comprehending
illocutionary force (Koike, 1989). In short, the literature presents two
generally accepted claims about the relationship between grammatical and
pragmatic competence: (1) grammar is not a sufficient condition
for pragmatic competence;
however, (2) grammar
is a necessary
condition for pragmatic competence (Levinson, 1983; Koike,
1989).
The first claim is based on the observation that a learner already knows
linguistic structures but has not yet learnt to use them as some pragmatic
strategies (Bardovi-Harlig & Dornyei, 1998). The second claim is based on
the observation that a learner knows
the appropriate pragmatic
strategy for a given
context, but does not know how
to realize it due
to limited linguistic knowledge (Takahashi & Beebe, 1993). This fact
might be a possible reason behind the overusing of direct strategies by the low
learners in the present study.
As a
matter of fact,
the higher frequency
of direct strategies
among lower proficiency
learners is probably
a developmental stage where simpler and also more direct expressions are
being used. The low proficiency
learners use direct type of requesting because of lack of lexical and syntactic
knowledge to produce an indirect request strategy which requires more complex
structures.
This tendency among the low group results from L1 transfer since direct
request is the common form of request speech act in Persian language
(Eslamirasekh, 1993). So it is reasonable to claim that this strategy is used
by the low learners automatically in English; since the two other request types
used by native speakers of English are more grammatically complex, they may not
be automatized in the learners' interlanguage. The low learners, then, seek to
mitigate or avoid face-threatening
behavior in ways
they know best.
In this regard
Olshtain and Cohen (1991) mention
that "second language learners'
attempts to translate
conventional routines specific
to first language
verbatim into the
second language often result in miscommunication even if the results of
their attempts are grammatically correct" (p. 155). A negative correlation
is found between the likelihood of transfer and the level of proficiency. Advanced
learners excel lower learners at identifying contexts where L1 speech act
strategies could or could not be used.
It is important to note that in the present study non-conventionally
indirect strategies are the least made request types in all groups. The
underuse of this strategy by native speakers might be due to the fact that
native speakers of English conceive of this type of requesting as being less
polite than conventionally indirect strategy (Blum-Kulka, 1987 cited in Brown
& Levinson, 1987). In line with this view, Weizman (1993) affirms that
non-conventionally indirect request requires the hearer to deduce the speaker’s
intention, which can be a burden to the hearer. The highly inferential nature of
this strategy may be the major cause for their being regarded as less polite
than conventionally indirect strategies (p. 125).
Learners, specially the low proficiency group, are probably not
sufficiently competent to use this type of requesting that is considered the
most complex and indirect strategy. It is also important to mention that
non-conventionally indirect requests require the addressee to compute the
illocution from the interaction of the locution with its context (Ruzickova, 2007,
p. 1177). Accordingly, it is believed by many researchers, learners acquire the
use of utterances with opaque illocutionary meanings later in their pragmatic
acquisition. High indirect pragmatic strategies such as hinting require high
processing cost and, therefore, such strategies may be more difficult to
acquire (Bouton, 1994; Kasper & Schmidt, 1996).
The findings of this study, on the other hand, contradict that of Weizman
(1993) and Trosborg (1995) in which learners used non-conventionally indirect
strategies more than
native speakers. Weizman
(1993) suggests that
Hints have a highly “deniability potential”.
Accordingly, the overuse of Hints by the learners may result from their
exploitation of the inferential nature of Hints in order to save their own face
(p. 95). Trosborg (1995) suggests that
learners get no further than making a preliminary to a request because they are
doubtful about how to phrase the actual request. The addressee, however,
interprets the preliminary move as Hints, eliminating the need for the learner
to make real request at all.
Insert tables 4 & 5 here
As for the second part of the second question- difference in the type and
frequency of the request strategies made by Iranian EFL students and the native
speakers of English based on social constrains of power and distance - the
analysis of the distribution of the request strategy types in six combinations
of situations is discussed here in the following parts:
3.2.1 Combination A
The analysis of the request strategies used by native and non-native
speakers reveals that in combination A (=P +D), the use of conventionally
indirect strategies plays a significant role as the most favored for both
native speakers and EFL learners (See table 6 for the frequency of strategy
types and table 7 showing the difference). According to Blum-Kulka et al. (1989
cited in Chen, 2007, p. 46), the level of directness of a request has strong
correlation with the expectation of right
and obligations between
hearers and speakers.
The greater the
right of the
speaker to ask
and the greater
the obligation of the hearer to comply with the request, the less
motivation for the use of indirectness. Relative dominance also affects the
level of indirectness. That is, the greater the speaker’s dominance (power) to
the addressee, the lower the use of indirectness is expected. Additionally, as
argued by Rue, Zhang, and Shin (2007), when the interlocutors do not know each
other, there is a strong trend of employing conventionally indirect strategy
type of requesting. EFL learners
display developmental patterns in using indirectness in these situations. In other
words, a decline in direct request is observed with increasing proficiency. The
main reason might be their sufficient pragmatic competence in relation to
the effect of
social power on
choosing the contextually
proper type of
requesting. However, the
higher proficiency learners in this study are more indirect than native
speakers. Similarly, in the previous ILP studies (Byon, 2004) the advanced
learners appear to develop a greater sensitivity to the use of politeness
strategies in requesting than native
speakers. That is,
EFL learners sometimes
experience communication breakdown
due to over
generalizing stereotypes of the target language culture. In this case,
they tend to overuse conventionally indirect strategy which is
considered as the most polite type of requesting.
Insert tables 6 & 7 here
3.2.2 Combination B
Considering the correlation between the level of indirectness of requesting
and expectations of rights and obligations between the interlocutors, native
speakers show less motivation for the use of indirectness. Since there is equal
social status between the speaker and the hearer (e.g. friends), the requester
is not endowed with a contracted right to make his/her request, just as the
requestee who is by no means obligated to comply with it. Therefore, the
request may be performed without abundance
of politeness and as compared
with addressing the
familiar equal person;
the native subjects seem to be
more direct by employing direct sub-strategies as the second preferred type of
requesting (See table 8 for frequency of strategy types and table 9 showing the
difference).
On the contrary,
EFL learners mainly
rely on the
conventional indirectness which implies the
fact that they
do not acquire the sociopragmatic knowledge necessary to perform
appropriate request type which is contextually proper under the varying social
distance. In other words, by keeping the same trend of in two combinations, EFL
learners are not sensitive enough to the effect of social distance to utilize
more variation in the types of request strategy.
It is likely that Iranian EFL learners are not taught how to perform
appropriate speech act under varying situational features. So they may produce
grammatically correct utterances, but inauthentic performance in terms of real
language use.
Insert tables 8 & 9 here
3.2.3 Combination C
In addressing unfamiliar people in the lower position, non-native speakers
are more direct than native speakers. While the native speakers use both direct
and indirect strategies as the preferred type of requesting, EFL learners
choose direct request as the preferred strategy. Among them, the low level
learners show strong tendency towards the use of the most direct type of
requesting, Imperative. In general, both native subjects and EFL learners are
more direct in comparison with the previous situations in which they are
requesting someone with
equal power. In situations
of this type,
the requester (e.g.
customer, teacher) has authority
over the requestee
(e.g. waiter, student).
The greater the
right of the
speaker to ask
and the greater
the obligation of the hearer to comply with the request, the greater the
likelihood of licensing direct request. Regarding the social distance between
the interlocutors, the speaker and the hearer do not know each other, and so
there is a strong trend of employing conventionally indirect strategy
type.
Obviously native speakers show sensitivity to both social power and social
distance by utilizing more variation in the types of requesting. Thus, they use
both direct and indirect strategies. Overuse of direct request might display
learners’ sensitivity to social power but their unawareness of the effect of
social distance.
The overuse of
Imperative by the
low learners might
suggest their insufficient
pragmatic competence which
makes them unable to use the necessary pragmalinguistic means to express
an appropriate request. Moreover, the fact that the higher learners display
closer performance to native speakers in terms of indirectness demonstrates a
developmental
pattern in their
interlanguage request. This
finding supports grammatical
competence as a
necessary condition for pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig,
1999).
Insert tables 10 & 11 here
3.2.4 Combination D
In the realization of requests with familiar juniors in combination D,
native speakers employ various direct strategies. They apply indirect strategy
as the second preferred type of requesting. Unlike the previous combinations,
the native speakers chose various
types of direct
sub-strategies such as
Imperative, Want statement, and
Hedged performative attesting to
the fact that the speaker’s (e.g., professor’s) social status is higher than
the addressee’s (e.g., student’s), and therefore, he
has the right
to make a
request and the
hearer has the
obligation to obey.
Accordingly, face-saving strategies
are not required and the choice of strategy tends to move toward directness.
Like native speakers, the higher
proficient learners showed productive and varied forms of direct
sub-strategies whereas the low proficient group still focused on the most
direct sub-strategy, Imperative. This implies that the higher learners show
sensitivity to the change of social distance,
and in this
regard they have
developed sufficient pragmatic
competence to display
target-like behavior. Accordingly, they realize different forms of
direct request such as Want statement, Hedged performative, and Imperative (See
table 12 for frequency of strategy types and table 13 showing the
difference).
Insert tables 12& 13 here
3.2.5 Combination E
In this particular
combination native speakers
are prone to
use Preparatory as
the most appropriate
way to realize requests in the situations in which
the addressee has a higher power rank
and there is little familiarity between the interlocutors. The next preferred
formula of head acts for native speakers is Strong hints. In other words, they
almost exclusively rely on indirectness.
According to the notion of dominance and obligation mentioned earlier, the
speaker (e.g., student) has little right to ask the hearer (e.g., professor),
and also the hearer has no obligation to comply with the request. On the other
hand, since the interlocutors' social distance is greater, the greater use of
indirectness is expected. EFL learners
do not display the native-like performance. They tend to choose various direct
sub-strategies as the second preferred type of requesting. Thus, they are much
more direct than their native counterparts.
This might be the reflection of lack of well-developed pragmatic competence in
addressing someone in higher status. In other words, in spite of having a good
command of grammatical competence, EFL learners show little evidence of
situational variation (See table 14 for frequency of strategy types and table
15 showing the difference).
As most Iranian
learners overgeneralize the
use of direct
requests, it appears
that Iranian learners
rely on their
L1 sociopragmatic knowledge while
speaking to unfamiliar
superiors. In Eslamirasekh's (1993)
study Persian speakers used
significantly more direct
strategies in all
situations compared to
English speakers. That
is, the two
cultures disagree on the specific directness level appropriate for a
given situation (p.96).
However, the use of indirectness by the speakers of one language does not
imply that they are more polite than the speakers of another language.
According to Brown and Levinson's (1987) notion of positive politeness,
"although the FTAs are performed with redressive action when adopting
positive politeness, indirectness is not included among these strategies"
(p.130). So Eslamirasekh (1993) concludes that the overuse of direct strategies
does not imply that Persian speakers are less polite than English speakers
because they use direct strategies by the use of mitigating elements (e.g., excuse
me, dear friend, …) (p. 97).
Insert tables 14& 15 here
3.2.6 Combination F
Native speakers place more variance in the choice of request strategies
when requests are made toward the addressees who are familiar superiors. They
use both direct and conventionally indirect strategies as preferred types of
requesting. That is, by change of social distance between interlocutors native
speakers change their level of directness.
Although the speaker (e.g. customer) has lower social dominance than the
hearer (e.g. manager) and therefore there is motivation toward
indirectness, the interlocutors
know each other
and there is
strong trend of
using direct type
of requesting. EFL learners,
however, do not
utilize their requests
in native-like way.
They show a
decline in the
proportion of Imperative and a shift to conventional indirectness. Since
learners are not sensitive enough to the effect of social distance, they do not
display significant change in their choice of request strategies in addressing
unfamiliar or familiar superiors. In other words, an anticipated trend toward
greater directness does not take place with an increase in
familiarity by the learners, especially with higher proficiency.
EFL learners do
not notice social
distance, so they
are producing more
indirect strategies in
English which is traditionally described
to them as
being more polite
in its request
form. That is,
it seems that
EFL learners overgeneralize
stereotypes of the target culture by focusing on conventionally indirect strategies.
The fact that the low proficient learners in these situations have used more
direct requests may not be considered as emanating from their well-developed
pragmatic knowledge but the influence of their first language competence since
the pragmatic trend of overusing directness by the low group has been observed
in almost all situations (See table 16 for frequency of strategy types and
table17 showing the difference).
Insert tables 16 & 17 here
An ILP research to investigate the sociopragmatic features of Iranian EFL
learners, this experiment contributes to the field of interlanguage pragmatics.
By enhancing our understandings of the interlanguage features of the EFL
learners in English speech act
of request, it
is hoped that
this study will
illustrate the significance
of interlanguage pragmatic
studies among EFL educators and researchers, and stimulate their research
interest in this fast growing discipline.
This type of study not only is useful in supplying teachers and material
developers with native speakers' baseline data, but also indicates how and in
what situations certain groups deviate from native speaker norms. It should therefore
be a major goal to teach relevant general cultural schemata and to make
non-native learners aware of differences between their own cultural schemata
and those of native speakers.
In line with results of other studies (Alcon, 2005; Bardovi-Harlig &
Taylor, 2003; Kasper & Rose, 1999), one of the major findings
of the present
research is that
if teachers in
foreign language classrooms
provide L2 learners
with relevant input, learners can develop appropriate request behaviors
similar to those of native speakers. However, the present study merely investigated
the directness level of speech act of request and did not look at the length of
the requests produced, the
use of politeness
markers, or external
and internal modifications of
the request. Therefore, further studies are needed to
unveil and explore these issues.
4. Conclusion
This study was designed to address the important issue of pragmatic
development of request strategies in Iranian EFL learners in order to determine
whether and to what extent interlanguage realization of the speech act of
requesting by Iranian learners differs from request realization by native
speakers in English.
The conventionally indirect strategy might be a universal method of making
request toward the addressees (Ellis, 1994; Trosborg, 1995). The present study
suggested a positive correlation between the use of indirect type of requesting
and the learners' proficiency level, that is, Iranian EFL learners display
developmental patterns of request strategies. It was observed that the high
proficient learners overused the conventional indirect strategy type. So in
line with the findings of other interlanguage studies (Byon, 2004; Rue et al.,
2007), in the present experiment the higher EFL learners appear to develop a
greater sensitivity to the use of more polite strategies in requesting than
what is seen in native speakers. This study also supports Ellis's (1994) view
that even advanced learners do not acquire fully native-like ways
of requesting.
In terms of the influence of the social variables, the findings of this
research reveal that as far as social dominance is concerned, EFL learners
display closer performance to native speakers. But in terms of social distance
many differences are observed between the types of request strategy made by
native speakers and Iranian learners. It seems that EFL learners have not
acquired sufficient sociopragmatic knowledge to be able to display the proper
social behavior. That is, they are not sensitive to both social power and
social distance.
L2 learners may have access to the same range of speech acts and
realizations as do native speakers, but they differ from native speakers in the
strategies they choose. More importantly, L2 learners must be aware of second
language socio-cultural constraints on speech acts in order to be pragmatically
competent. Following Rose and Kasper (2001), we claim that
although highly context-sensitive in
selecting pragmatic strategies
in their own
language, learners may underdifferentiate such context variables
as social distance and social power in L2.
It is important to note that, as predicted by politeness theory (Brown
& Levinson, 1987), power relationship, social and psychological distance,
and degree of imposition constrain communicative action universally, but
learners' assessment of the weight and values of these universal context
factors varies substantively from context to context as well as across speech communities.
There is thus a strong
indication that instructional
intervention may be
facilitative to, or
even necessary for, the development of L2 pragmatic awareness.
Finally, it is hoped that research in second language pragmatics will not
only improve our understanding of pragmatic development in speech act
realization and of the nature of strategies but will also enable us to
incorporate effective methods of teaching pragmatics in the EFL
classrooms.
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