Interlanguage request modification: The use of lexical/phrasal downgraders and mitigating supportive moves

Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria

doi:10.1515/mult.2009.004

Cited by 45 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Economidou-Kogetsidis' (2008,2009) and Woodfield & EconomidouKogetsidis' (2010) studies both focused on advanced learners of English. Economidou- Kogetsidis (2008Kogetsidis ( , 2009) used written discourse completion tasks to analyse both external and internal request modifiers of advanced Greek learners of English. Findings from her studies showed that, in comparison to British English native speakers, advanced language learners of English used fewer internal modifiers and showed a rather restricted range of peripheral request devices.…”

Section: Previous Studies On Request Modifiersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mitigating e-mail requests in teenagers’ first and second language academic cyber-consultation

Soler

2013

Multilingua

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The study analyses teenagers' e-mail requests during academic cyberconsultation, exploring how the performance of request modifiers is influenced by participants' perceptions of the degree of imposition of the speech act and social distance with the recipient. A total of 295 e-mail requests, 145 produced by British English speakers (BES) and 150 performed by International English speakers (IES), were randomly selected from all the e-mail requests that International Baccalaureate students sent to their learning mentor between September and December 2011. They were analysed with regard to the use of internal and external request mitigators and participants' judgments of the degree of request imposition and social distance with the e-mail recipient. Results of the study show that participants do not frequently rely on mitigators, but whenever they perceive the need to mitigate the request, pragmatic variation is observed between BES and IES. Thus, when the request is perceived as demanding, BES activate their pragmalinguistic knowledge and use a wider range of internal modifiers (both lexical and syntactic). In contrast, IES seem to lack pragmalinguistic knowledge to soften the request. Finally, although teenagers do not perceive their relationship with their learning mentor as one of +social distance, BES and IES show variation in their choice of form of address. Findings from the study suggest the need to incorporate training on e-mail politeness in future pragmatics-based pedagogical interventions.

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Section: Previous Studies On Request Modifiersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mitigating e-mail requests in teenagers’ first and second language academic cyber-consultation

Soler

2013

Multilingua

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“…The current study also confirms that regardless of proficiency level, grounders tended to be the most popular external strategy that learners used to mitigate requests in the L2. It is possible that learners provided a justification for their requests (e.g., Economidou‐Kogetsidis, , ; Schauer, ; Woodfield & Economidou‐Kogetsidis, ) because (1) learners attempted to signal concern for the interlocutor's face through lessening the degree of imposition of their own requests (see also Hassall, ), and (2) the flexibility of the linguistic structure needed for external strategies provided learners with a chance to avoid exposing their lack of pragmalinguistic knowledge (see Woodfield & Economidou‐Kogetsidis, ), although this last explanation may not apply to the advanced learners, who seemed to overuse external modification to the point that their linguistic choices diverged from native speaker norms, a finding that was also noted in Al‐Gahtani and Roever ().…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interlanguage Pragmatic Development: Internal and External Modification in L2 Arabic Requests

Masaeed

2017

Foreign Language Annals

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This study investigated the way in which American university students learning Arabic as a foreign language in the United States developed the ability to make and modify requests both internally, through an addition of mitigating or aggravating modality markers, and externally, via supportive moves before or after the main request in formal and informal situations. Data were gathered from spoken discourse completion tasks for 56 university students from four different proficiency levels. While previous studies showed that learners at lower proficiency levels relied heavily on politeness markers, lower‐proficiency students in this study most frequently used grounders. Also in contrast to previous studies, the ways in which advanced learners mitigated their requests diverged from those used by Arabic native speakers. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

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“…Originally, the WDCT allowed some rule-delimited spacing for the omitted request, followed by a response. However, since Rose found that "[…] the inclusion of hearer response did not have a significant effect on requests elicited […]'' (Rose, 1992, p. 49), questioning the need of including the hearer's answer, since in real communicative exchanges one usually does not know, beforehand, the hearer's reaction, a number of other studies that followed eliminated the rejoinder and used an open questionnaire (Felix-Brasdefer, 2003;Marti, 2006;Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2009;Woodfield & Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2010;Schalkoski-Dias, 2010;among others). Therefore, we have opted to omit the hearer's answer in our WDCTs.…”

Section: Data Collection and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

<b>Supportive moves in requests and orders in brazilian portuguese and uruguayan spanish variant

Schalkoski-Dias¹,

Godoy²

2018

Acta Sci. Lang. Cult.

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Considering the linguistic politeness studies (Brown & Levinson, 1987) and the request analysis categories usually described in cross-cultural research (Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989a), this paper examines the discursive strategies that support requests and orders in a corpus produced by brazilians (from Curitiba), and uruguayans (from Montevideo). It is sought to verify whether the traditionally described categories apply to the data and to what extent the strategies used agree in these two linguisticcultural communities. To this end, different contextual variables are taken into account by means of a Written Discourse-Completion Test. We raised the initial hypothesis that geographical and cultural nearness between the two societies favors a strong similarity in the strategies used by their members. However, the comparison between the external mitigating strategies produced in specific contexts has shown certain pragmatic and linguistic patterns that are specific of each group, as it is the case of the increased tendency towards the expression of negative politeness by uruguayan informants.Movimentos de apoio em pedidos e ordens em variante do português brasileiro e do espanhol uruguaio RESUMO. Considerando os estudos de polidez linguística (Brown & Levinson, 1987) e as categorias de análise de pedidos, tradicionalmente descritas na pesquisa intercultural (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989a), este artigo examina as estratégias discursivas que apoiam pedidos e ordens em um corpus produzido por brasileiros (de Curitiba) e uruguaios (de Montevidéu). Busca-se verificar se as categorias tradicionalmente descritas aplicam-se aos dados e em que medida as estratégias empregadas coincidem nessas duas comunidades linguístico-culturais. Para isso, diferentes variáveis contextuais são consideradas, por meio de um questionário escrito. Parte-se da hipótese de que a proximidade geográfica e cultural entre as duas sociedades favoreceria uma forte similaridade nas estratégias usadas por seus membros. Entretanto, a comparação entre as estratégias linguísticas de polidez produzidas em contextos específicos demonstrou certos padrões linguísticos e pragmáticos que são específicos de cada grupo, como a maior tendência de expressão de polidez negativa pelos informantes uruguaios.

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Interlanguage request modification: The use of lexical/phrasal downgraders and mitigating supportive moves

Cited by 45 publications

References 32 publications

Mitigating e-mail requests in teenagers’ first and second language academic cyber-consultation

Mitigating e-mail requests in teenagers’ first and second language academic cyber-consultation

Interlanguage Pragmatic Development: Internal and External Modification in L2 Arabic Requests

<b>Supportive moves in requests and orders in brazilian portuguese and uruguayan spanish variant

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