The Effects of Setting in English Native Speakers’ Use of Request Modification Devices

Abstract

[Abstract] The speech act of requesting has been widely examined both in interlanguage and cross-cultural pragmatics. However, most of this research has focused on the pragmalinguistic form to express the request head act and has given scarce attention to those modifiers used in the process of requesting. Furthermore, studies such as Nickels’ (2006) have provided evidence of the effects of Setting in learners’ realisations of requests. Yet the importance of Setting as an independent variable has not been the focus of empirical research either. Considering the need to broaden the scope of research on requests modifiers and how these are performed in different Settings, the present paper tries to offer an insight of the modification devices used by British undergraduate students while performing a role-play activity both in the academic and the non-academic Setting. Findings from the present study show that our participants modified their request moves both internally and externally, the former type being preferred over the latter and that, participants used more modification devices in the non-academic Setting. Furthermore, results show that both the rank of imposition and the politeness system also influenced participants’ production of requests. A conclusion and suggestions for further research are drawn upon these findings.