Situational Variations in Request and Apology Realization Strategies among International Postgraduate Students at Malaysian Universities

Abstract

<p>The present study attempted to describe the request, apology, and request mitigation strategies utilized by international postgraduate students in confronting different situations. In addition, it examined the effects of the situational factors of social distance, power, and imposition on the students’ choice of request and apology strategies as well as the modifications in requests. Another objective has been to categorize the difficulties students face in the production of the speech acts. One hundred and thirty international postgraduate students majoring in different fields voluntarily participated in this study. A Written Discourse Completion Task Questionnaire (Liu, 2005) and semi-structured interview were utilized for data collection procedure. The results of the questionnaire illustrated that the participants made use of IFID strategy for apologies and conventionally indirect expressions (Preparatory questions) for requests more frequently than other strategies. Moreover, the situational factors of social distance, power and imposition did not affect the participants’ choice of request and apology strategies but they had some influences on the use of mitigating strategies in different situations. Regarding modifiers, the students opted out external modifications (66.6%) more than internal modifiers (33.3%). Among the external mitigation types, “please” with 21% and grounders with 25% respectively have been utilized more than other external mitigation types. Finally, the results of the interviews indicated that the difficulties that students face in the production of the speech acts were grammar, expression, vocabulary and structure. This study has some implications for second language acquisition research and intercultural communication.</p>

A Deeper Look into Requests: Insight from Jordanian Speakers of Arabic Vis-À-Vis American English Speaker

“…And this result is partially in agreement with (Muthusamy and Farashaiyan, 2016) who concluded the use of conventionally indirect expressions (preparatory questions) is preferred for requests more often than other expressions, regardless of power, the social distance and imposition, where request strategies affected the use of mitigating strategies in different situations. There is something that we should consider that social distance and power play a significant role in affecting the speech request strategies.…”

Politeness Strategies in Asking Request among Javanese Youth in Tulungagung

“…Finally it is also found that YTs often used conventionally indirect strategy in doing request regardless the specific context of communication. Such a finding confirms Muthusamy and Farashaiyan (2016) who concluded their study that the use of conventionally indrect strategy (preparatory questions) is more ferquently used, regardless of the power, the social distance and imposition, where the request strategies affected the use of mitigating strategies in different situations [13] [14].…”

Realization of the Speech Acts of Request and Apology by Middle Eastern EFL Learners

“…Another study was conducted by Muthusamy and Farashaiyan (2016) on request, apology, and request mitigation strategies used by one hundred and thirty international postgraduate students specializing in different domains. The results showed that the participants used conventionally indirect expressions (preparatory questions) for requests more often than other expressions.…”