(2010) NS & NNS Students' Requests to Faculty for an Extension

‘I just need more time’: A study of nativeand non-native students’ requests to faculty

for an extension

HELEN WOODFIELD and MARIA ECONOMIDOU-KOGETSIDIS

Abstract

This paper examines the status-unequal requests of 89 advanced mixed-L1learners and 87 British English native speakers elicited by a written dis-course completion task. Significant differences were observed in all threedimensions analysed: internal and external modification, and perspective.The data demonstrate learners’ overuse of zero marking in internal modifi-cation and overuse of preparators in supportive moves. External modifica-tion patterns also differed qualitatively in learners’ provision of detailedcontent and in native speakers’ employment of interpersonal orientationmoves. Native speakers used significantly more requests employing imper-sonal perspective and in association with a range of mitigating, ellipticaland formulaic devices. In this paper, we explore these quantitative & quali-tative differences in patterns of speech act behaviour and consider the im-plications for learner development.

Keywords: interlanguage requests, modification, Greek learners

1. Introduction

In the field of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) there is now a substantialbody of empirical studies which document how learners and nativespeakers differ with regard to speech act production (Blum-Kulka et al.1989; Trosborg 1995; Hill 1997; Hassall 2001). Indeed it has been ob-served (Bardovi-Harlig 1999; Kasper & Rose 2002; Schauer 2007) thatmuch of the research in ILP has taken such a comparative focus. Suchresearch has established that while learners have access to the same rangeof speech act realisation strategies, or conventions of means (Clark 1979;Kasper & Rose 1999) as native speakers,1 learners have been found todiffer from native speakers irrespective of proficiency level (Kasper &Rose 1999: 86) in the conventions of form, choice of speech acts, seman-tic formulas and content (Bardovi-Harlig 1999, 2001).

Multilingua 29 (2010), 77�118 01678507/2010/029�0077DOI 10.1515/mult.2010.004 � Walter de Gruyter

78 Helen Woodfield and Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis

Within the range of studies investigating the pragmatic performanceof learners, investigations have employed both cross-sectional and ‘singlemoment’ designs (Cook 1993; Rose 2000; Woodfield 2008a). Of these,the former aim to investigate acquisition of pragmatic development bycomparing groups of learners at different stages of proficiency (Trosborg1995; Hill 1997) while the latter ‘either lump all the learners together inone group, or separate them by first language or criteria other thanchronological development’ (Cook 1993: 34). While such ‘single mo-ment’ studies may inform us about speech act use, they indicate verylittle, however, regarding learner acquisition and development.

The present study falls into this latter category and takes as its focusthe pragmalinguistic aspects of pragmatic performance. We documented89 responses from mixed-L1 (Greek, German and Japanese) university-level English as a second language (ESL) learners on a written discoursecompletion task (WDCT) (Brown 2001), eliciting a request in a status-unequal (student/tutor) scenario. These interlanguage requests are com-pared with 87 responses from British English native speaker2 graduateand undergraduate students on the same task. In order to avoid influ-ences from other cultures living in Britain, no ethnic-minority studentswere included in the study. The British students who participated camefrom England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

The non-English participants were advanced learners of English,studying at British universities. Their English language proficiency wasassessed and established by means of standardised test scores (i.e.TOEFL, IELTS, GCSE English Language) as set by the English lan-guage entry requirements policy of the universities. The participants’ re-sponses were then analysed across three key dimensions: internal modifi-cation, external modification and request perspective.

In terms of the methodology employed, we acknowledge the extensivecriticisms of written discourse completion tasks in the literature (Bou-Franch & Lorenzo-Dus 2005; Golato 2003; Mey 2004), specifically inrelation to the construct validity of such tasks for examining discoursefeatures of pragmatic performance (Johnston et al. 1998) and we returnto these criticisms in sections 3.2 and 4.4 below. As Kasper (2008: 291)observes, employing questionnaires in pragmatics research excludes fromstudy ‘precisely those pragmatic features that are specific to spoken in-teractional discourse � any aspect related to interactional contingencies,turn-taking, sequencing of actions, speaker�listener coordination, fea-tures of speech production that may have pragmatic import, such ashesitation, and all paralinguistic and non-verbal resources’. Among theinstruments available to researchers for examining production in prag-matics studies, production questionnaires do not generate interactivelanguage samples (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford 2005: 11), and as Kasper

‘I just need more time’ 79

(2008: 294) points out, ‘DCTs and other questionnaire formats elicit in-tuitional data rather than data on language use and behaviour’. Thefocus of the present study is, however, on the nature of the pragmalingu-istic resources employed by learners and native speakers rather than onthe nature of speech acts in interaction (Kasper 2006). We supportKasper & Rose’s (2002) contention that ‘when carefully designed,WDCTs provide useful information about speakers’ pragmalinguisticknowledge of the strategies and linguistic forms by which communicativeacts can be implemented and about their sociopragmatic knowledge ofthe context factors under which particular strategic and linguistic choicesare appropriate’ (Kasper & Rose 2002: 96). As a means of collectingdata on learners’ knowledge of conventions of form, WDCTs continueto be employed in studies of interlanguage production (Economidou-Kogetsidis 2009; Bataineh & Bataineh 2006; Dalmau & Gotor 2007).

Specifically, this study aims to build on previous comparative researchin pragmatic performance of ESL learners and native speakers in threeways: first, by providing a detailed quantitative and qualitative examina-tion of the internal and external modification patterns and features em-ployed by advanced ESL learners as compared to native speakers in thewritten production of English requests. Second, the investigation pres-ents findings from an analysis of request perspective of both groups ofparticipants, thus adding to the few studies (Blum-Kulka & Levenston1987; Ellis 1992, 1997) which have employed such an analysis of interlan-guage speech act performance. Third, the study presents a brief analysisof some of the grammatical and discourse aspects of interlanguage andnative speaker requests in the corpus, aspects which to our knowledgehave not been extensively examined in the literature to date, with theexception of a few studies (Blum-Kulka & Levenston 1987; Eisenstein &Bodman 1993; Hassall 2001; see also Bardovi-Harlig 1999 for a reviewof studies examining the relation of grammatical and pragmatic compe-tence).

2. Background

In this review of the literature, we will begin by surveying the evidenceregarding learners’ internal mitigation of requests in production studiesas compared to patterns of use by native speakers, taking as our focusadult learners and those studies in which English is the target language,although evidence from studies where other target languages have beenexplored and which are relevant to our investigation will also be dis-cussed. We will then consider the evidence regarding external modifica-tion patterns in learners’ requesting behaviour. Finally, we will explorethe evidence from those studies which have incorporated an analysis of


learners’ use of perspective in request formulation. In this survey, evi-dence will be drawn predominantly from cross-sectional and single mo-ment designs (see Cook 1993; and Rose 2000 for a discussion of thisdistinction) while insights from longitudinal studies will also be high-lighted.

2.1 Internal mitigation in interlanguage requests

In recent years, a number of studies of interlanguage requests have em-ployed cross-sectional designs in order to examine pragmatic develop-ment in learners of English at different levels of proficiency. Togetherwith ‘single moment’ studies, such investigations have provided insightsregarding ESL and EFL learners’ knowledge of pragmalinguistic con-ventions of form in speech act use as elicited through a variety of instru-ments including written discourse completion tasks (Blum-Kulka et al.1989; Hill 1997) and oral role plays (Trosborg 1995; Kobayashi & Rin-nert 2003).

In one of the earliest single moment studies (Rose 2000: 32) employinga written discourse completion task, House & Kasper (1987) comparedthe request realisations of native British English speakers, native Ger-man and Danish speakers, and German and Danish learners of English.The qualitative analysis of internal modification of requests in this studypointed to a preference for interrogatives, (as in ‘Could I trouble youfor a lift home?’) as a syntactic mitigation device across language groupsand situations (House & Kasper 1987: 1267). Observing the use of lexi-cal/phrasal downgraders, House & Kasper (1987: 1274) note that thepoliteness marker ‘please’3 was overrepresented in the learner requestsfor both groups and that the native English group also mitigated fre-quently with this device.

Turning to further large-scale cross-sectional studies, requests in Eng-lish were one of the three speech acts investigated in Trosborg’s (1995)study. The context of Trosborg’s study was the learning of English as aforeign language by Danish secondary school, high school and universitystudents and the requests were elicited through role play. Data were alsocollected from native speakers of Danish and English. In her analysis ofinternal modification of requests for learners and native speakers, thelatter group were observed to internally modify requests more frequentlythan the learner group overall and this quantitative pattern was reflectedin the analysis of both syntactic and lexical/phrasal downgraders (Tros-borg 1995: 246). A qualitative analysis of the type of internal modifica-tion strategies employed also pointed to differences between the Englishnative speaker and learner group. In the use of syntactic downgraders,a preference for past tense forms was in evidence by the native speakers


of English while this modification device was less prominent in thelearner data (Trosborg 1995: 247). Analysis of the lexical/phrasal down-graders in Trosborg’s (1995) study pointed to further differences betweenlearners and native English speakers with the latter group evidencing awider range of devices of this type as compared to each group of learn-ers. In a further large-scale cross-sectional study of Japanese EFL learn-ers at different proficiency levels, Hill (1997) found that the advancedgroup, while displaying an increase in downgraders per request, still fellshort of target norms as represented in the native speaker data. Ananalysis of the sub-strategies used in internal mitigation patterns in Hill’sstudy indicated a move away from native speaker norms by the learnergroup in the overuse of syntactic downgraders (e.g. interrogative, nega-tion, continuous and conditional forms) as compared to the nativespeaker group.

Further evidence of the nature of internal modification devices byJapanese university level EFL learners is available through an examina-tion of Sasaki’s (1998) study of twelve learners’ production of requestsand refusals. In this methodological comparison study, data were elicitedby role play and discourse completion tasks. In the production of re-quests, Sasaki (1998: 471) observes that her participants ‘used fewer in-ternal modifications than reported in other studies’ and ascribes thisfinding to the participants’ level of proficiency, which may have re-stricted a greater variety of modifications. Forms employed by the learn-ers to internally modify their requests in both elicitation formats overallwere limited in this study to the use of conditional syntactic downgraders(‘could’, ‘would’); the politeness marker (‘please’); understaters4 (‘a lit-tle’) and tense. In the production questionnaires, internal modificationby tense (use of past tense for present time, e.g. ‘I wondered if you couldVP’) and aspect (e.g. ‘I was wondering if you could VP’) were altogetherabsent. Sasaki proposes a lack of linguistic development in the JapaneseEFL learners in her study as an explanation of the restricted range ofinternal modification strategies supplied in their English requesting be-haviour (p. 471).

The restricted range of linguistic devices which learners of Englishemploy in internal modification of request production is further docu-mented in studies of advanced Greek learners of English (Economidou-Kogetsidis 2008) and an investigation by Otcu & Zeyrek (2006). In thislatter study, a cross-sectional design was followed. Two groups of Tur-kish undergraduate students at low intermediate and upper intermediatelevels took part in interactive role plays in three situations while 13 na-tive speakers of English provided a control group: data from the lattergroup were collected through a discourse completion task. Two pointsof interest may be noted here. First, similar to the trends outlined in


Trosborg (1995), the findings of the study point to differences betweenthe learner and native speaker groups in the overall frequency of internalmodifiers employed, with the native speaker group modifying more fre-quently (Otcu & Zeyrek 2006: 9). Second, there were qualitative differ-ences between learner and native speaker groups in the nature of theinternal modifiers used. The authors observe that ‘neither of the learnergroups [could] make use of the full range of syntactic downgraders ob-served in the native speakers’ data’ (Otcu & Zeyrek 2006: 10), a findingwhich mirrors the observations on the rather restricted use of syntacticdowngraders by the Japanese learners in Sasaki’s (1998) study and inWoodfield’s (2006, 2007) research. For both the learner groups and thenative speaker group in Otcu and Zeyrek’s investigation, internal modifi-ers of the lexical/phrasal variety were the most frequent forms used. Bothlearner groups exhibited a preference for the politeness marker ‘please’,a finding which corresponds to the observations on German learners ofEnglish in House & Kasper’s (1987) study and on Danish learners ofEnglish in Faerch & Kasper’s (1989) research. Faerch & Kasper reportan overuse of the politeness marker ‘please’ in the Danish learners’ re-quests in English and explain this preference by ‘its double function asillocutionary force indicator and transparent mitigator … languagelearners tend to adhere to the conversational principle of clarity, choos-ing explicit, transparent unambiguous means of expression rather thanimplicit opaque and ambiguous realizations’ (Faerch & Kasper 1989:233).

Quantitative differences in internal modification in English requestsby graduate learners and native speakers are also evident in a singlemoment study by Woodfield (2004, 2008a) in which written discoursecompletion tasks were combined with verbal report. The learners in thisstudy comprised three pairs of German and three pairs of Japanese grad-uate students and their requests were compared with native speaker con-trols. Two findings may be highlighted in relation to those from otherstudies. First, the native speaker group modified their requests internallymore frequently than the learner groups overall, reflecting the findingsin the studies by Otcu & Zeyrek (2006) and Trosborg (1995). Secondly,quantitative differences between the native speaker group and both thelearner groups were evident when a comparison of frequency of internalmodification by more than one modifier was made. Woodfield (2007,2008a) observes that the native speakers internally modified their re-quests more frequently (25.6 percent) as compared to the German ESLlearners (2.17 percent) and the Japanese ESL learners (0 percent) sug-gesting that learners may experience difficulty in combining internalmodification devices when modifying requests internally.


The studies reviewed so far are indicative of both qualitative andquantitative differences in the patterns of internal modification in theproduction of requests by learners and native speakers of English. Has-sall’s (2001, 2003) study of Indonesian requests by Australian adultlearners sheds further light on differences between learner and nativespeaker groups in request production. In this investigation, interactiverole plays were the chosen method employed. Regarding internal modifi-cation, the study aimed to investigate whether second language learners‘tend to perform “bare” realizations of speech acts; that is ones devoidof internal modifiers’ (2001: 260). Three findings from this study are ofparticular interest. First, in comparing the overall frequency of internalmodification between the learner and native speaker groups, Hassall’sstudy found that learners rarely used internal modifiers in comparisonto the native speaker group (2001: 263). Second, the range of internalmodifiers employed by learners was limited to two modifiers (Appealerand Understater) (2001: 264) as compared to the native speaker groupwho employed Negators, Kinship terms and other forms of internalmodifier. Third, Hassall reports how the native speaker group, unlikethe learners, were able to combine different types of internal modifier ina ‘sizeable proportion’ of their requests (2001: 266). In this study therewas no evidence of learner requests where more than one internal modi-fier was employed � a finding which brings Hassall to conclude that ‘itseems to be inherently difficult for second language learners to add in-ternal modifiers’. Such evidence of learner difficulty in double internalmodification is also reflected in the requests of the ESL learners inWoodfield’s (2007, 2008a) study.

Turning to longitudinal investigations, Schauer’s research (2004, 2006)sheds light on acquisitional patterns in internal modification in interlan-guage requests. This study focused on the development of requests bytwelve German learners of English in study abroad contexts as comparedto a control group of 15 English native speakers. Data from a multime-dia elicitation task eliciting oral data were collected at three month in-tervals during the sojourn abroad. Findings on the development of in-ternal modification of English requests by the German learners indicatethat certain syntactic downgraders (Appreciative Embedding ‘It wouldbe really nice if you could fill it in’; Tentative Embedding ‘I wondered ifI can pop into your office sometime’ occurred in the learner data at thefirst and third data collection sessions (Schauer 2006: 151) whereas Con-ditional Clauses (‘I would like to ask if you could complete this)5 occurredmost frequently in the first data elicitation session, suggesting that thesestructures are acquired early on. In this study, two internal modificationdevices, Tag Questions and Negation were not used by the learners onany of the three occasions. However, certain lexical downgraders such


as the politeness marker (‘please’) and Downtoner6 (‘perhaps’) displayedhigh frequencies in the learner data during the first stage of data collec-tion suggesting that these had already been acquired by this group oflearners. In a study focusing on the acquisition of Spanish requests bynative speakers of U.S. English (Felix-Brasdefer 2007), advanced learn-ers employed conditional forms more frequently than intermediate learn-ers: these forms, however, were absent in the requests of the beginnerswho relied more heavily on the marker ‘please’ than the intermediateand advanced groups (Felix-Brasdefer 2007: 271).

Overall, the research on internal modification in interlanguage re-questing behaviour as compared to native use indicates a number oftrends. First, learners appear to make less frequent use of internal modi-fication overall as compared to native speaker controls (Hassall 2001;House & Kasper 1987; Trosborg 1995; Otcu & Zeyreck 2006). Second,evidence suggests that learners may have difficulty in combining internalmodifiers in request production (Hassall 2001; Woodfield 2008a; Eco-nomidou-Kogetsidis 2009). Third, there are indications that learners op-erate with a limited range of mitigating devices (Sasaki 1998; Woodfield2008a; Hassall 2001) as compared to native speakers. In terms of acquisi-tion, there is evidence from developmental studies that certain syntacticdowngraders may take time to acquire (Schauer 2004; Barron 2003),and that even at advanced levels these may fall short of target languagefrequencies (Trosborg 1995: 247).

2.2 External modification

Research in interlanguage requests has also explored patterns in the useof supportive moves by learners as compared to native speaker controlgroups. Mitigating supportive moves may take the form of linguisticstrategies in which the speaker gives reasons, explanations or justifica-tions for their request (Grounders) which may operate both as negativepoliteness strategies conveying an intention by the speaker not to im-pose, or positive politeness strategies by assuming the hearer’s coopera-tion (Hassall 2001: 266). A range of linguistic devices for externallymodifying requests have been documented (CCSARP 1989: 287; Tros-borg 1995: 267), including most recently those identified by Schauer(2007: 2002). Schauer extends Trosborg’s (1995) taxonomy by threemodification moves: first, those utterances at the beginning of the re-quest aimed at establishing a positive atmosphere (‘Small talk’), second,those utterances at the end of the request aimed at positive reinforcementof the speech act (Appreciator) and finally indicators of consideration ofthe interlocutor’s situation (Considerator).


There is growing evidence from several studies to support the notionthat the Grounder appears as the most frequent supportive move ininterlanguage requests (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain 1986; Faerch & Kasper1989; Hassall 2001; Woodfield 2004; Schauer 2007) and in native Englishrequests (House & Kasper 1987; Trosborg 1995). In his detailed study ofinterlanguage request modification, Hassall (2001: 266) reports that theAustralian learners of Indonesian in his study used Grounders ‘quiteconsistently across the 11 request situations’ and used a similar numberof such moves as the native group while Schauer (2007: 208) notes thatthe Grounder may constitute a core element of request utterances sup-porting Faerch & Kasper’s earlier contention that the ‘grounder standsout as the most single most frequent supportive move’ (Faerch & Kasper1989: 239).

Non-native effects, however, have been identified in external modifica-tion in interlanguage request behaviour. First, in support of findings inprevious studies employing written elicitation methods (Blum-Kulka &Olshtain 1986; House & Kasper 1987; Faerch & Kasper 1989; Blum-Kulka 1991), Hassall (2001) observes the use of over-explicit moves inlearners’ external modification patterns in the oral role-play data in hisinvestigation of Australian learners’ requests in Indonesian. Hassallnotes the incorporation of written cue-card information in the learners’oral requests as a possible cause of this phenomenon (Hassall 2001: 275)while noting that this cue-card effect in oral roleplays may not be asdramatic as the effects exerted by written elicitation instruments (as inthe CCSARP). Excessive use of external modification moves has beenobserved by Edmondson & House (1991: 274) who identify the ‘waffle’phenomenon as a ‘direct consequence of learners’ over-use of externalmodification or supportive moves’. Reasons for such over-suppliancehave been identified as stemming both from instrument-related effects,(as noted above) as well as from learners’ concern for propositional ex-plicitness (Kasper 1989: 54) or in the need for compensation strategiesby learners who do not have access to standard routines (Edmondson &House 1991). In addition to the over-suppliance of external modificationmoves in some studies as noted above, non-native effects were also iden-tified at the discourse level in Hassall’s (2001) study (Hassall 2001: 270)in learners’ use of explicit discourse linkers to ‘clarify the logical relationbetween Grounder and head act’ and in the ‘repeated, overt use of thefirst person pronoun’ (Hassall 2001: 270) which native speakers mightavoid through the use of ellipsis. Overall it seems that in relation toexternal modification, both instrument-related and learner-related fea-tures may play a part.


2.3 Request perspective

It seems that few studies in the interlanguage and cross-cultural prag-matics literature to date have presented analyses of perspective in therequesting behaviour of learners and native speakers of the target lan-guage, with the exception of a few. Blum-Kulka (1991: 266) observesthat ‘choice of request perspective is another source of variation formanipulating the request’s degree of coercive force. Choice of perspec-tive is one of the ways in which the native speaker signals his or herestimate of the degree of coerciveness required situationally’. Avoidingnaming the hearer as the performer of the requested act as in the choiceof speaker perspective, may minimise the imposition (Blum-Kulka &Levenston 1987: 158) while choice of joint perspective may serve to en-code a sense of commonality and solidarity between interlocutors. Twostudies to date which have included request perspective in the analysisare Blum-Kulka & Levenston’s (1987) quantitative and qualitativeanalysis of request perspective in learner and native speakers of Hebrewand English and Ellis’ (1992, 1997) classroom study of the developmentof request perspective in two young beginner learners of English. Re-garding Blum-Kulka & Levenston’s study, two findings are worth high-lighting. First, in relation to the request strategies by native speakers andlearners of Hebrew there was little evidence of joint perspective acrossthe five situations studied, a finding reflected in Ellis’ (1992, 1997) study.Second with regard to the Israeli learners of English, an overgeneralisa-tion of superordinate terms (give /have) was identified in contrast to thenative speakers who only used the verbs lend with hearer perspective andborrow with speaker perspective (Blum-Kulka & Levenston 1987: 162).Ellis’ study of two young beginner learners’ requests in a formal contextof learning found that the hearer perspective dominated throughout theelicitation period (four terms) reflecting the preponderance of mood-derivable requests in the data although the speaker perspective becamemore evident in the data as the learners acquired query preparatory andwant statements (Ellis 1997: 186).

3. Method

3.1 Research participants

Two participant groups comprising a total of 187 students took part inthe present study. These were 95 ESL learners and 92 British Englishnative speaker students of undergraduate and postgraduate study in UKhigher education institutions. A decision was made to include the re-sponses of both postgraduate and undergraduate students in the study,not only in order to increase the sample number, but also because this


variable was not expected to affect the linguistic choices made by theparticipants.

The learner group had an advanced English language proficiency andwere engaged in a range of fields of study. Their English language profi-ciency was assessed and established by means of standardised test scoresas set by the English language entry requirements policy of their univer-sity. Thus the students selected for the study had either a TOEFL scoreof minimum 550 (paper based), an IELTS7 score of 6.0, or a GCSEor IGCSE English Language score of minimum of C. The use of suchstandardised tests for determining the proficiency levels of learners helpsenhance the generalisability of research results as ‘the content of stan-dardized tests is available for public scrutiny, and their validity is subjectto ongoing investigation’ (Thomas 1994: 324).

Eighty-three of the ESL learners were native speakers of Greek. Theremaining twelve learners taking part in the study comprised three pairsof Japanese and three pairs of German learners who completed the taskin pairs. The data elicited from these twelve learners formed part of anearlier study (Woodfield 2004) in which a form of paired verbal reportwas employed in order to investigate the planning processes in writtenrequest production. The written responses to the task from this earlierstudy were included in order to extend the size of the corpus in thepresent study. Thus a total of 89 ESL learner responses were documentedand analysed. These participants had spent an average of 19.1 monthsin the target language community and their age ranged from 17 to 38.In order to achieve greater homogeneity, gender was controlled. An al-most equal number of male and female subjects participated in the study.

The British sample came from various parts of Britain and they wereall registered as permanent residents in the UK. It is important to notethat of the 92 British English native speaker sample, six of the studentscompleted the tasks in pairs. Thus a total of 89 native speaker responseswere documented. Of these 89, there were two occasions where a requestwas not produced, thus leaving 87 responses for the analysis of internaland external modification. A further four responses were unavailable foranalysis of perspective as these responses were propositionally incom-plete. The native speaker participants’ age ranged from 17 to 46 andthey were also engaged in a range of fields of study. As the UK is amulticultural society, ethnicity was controlled in relation to the nativespeaker population. Thus, in order to avoid influences from other cul-tures and languages, no ethnic-minority students were included in thestudy. Subsequently, the British participants came from England, Wales,Scotland and Ireland (see also Stewart 2006: 116 for a discussion of‘British English’). Completed questionnaires from respondents who re-ported to have lived in a foreign country for more than one year were


rejected. Similarly, responses from subjects who reported themselves asbeing native speakers of an additional language other than English werealso eliminated. An almost equal number of male and female subjectsparticipated in the study.

Engaging university students as participants in empirical research hasthe advantage of ensuring homogeneity as far as age, educational back-ground, social background and cultural background are concerned. Nev-ertheless, caution is needed not to generalise from a group of studentsto the full range of an overall population.

3.2 Instrument and procedure

A written discourse completion task (WDCT) was the main elicitationinstrument of the study but interview and verbal report data, which arebeyond the scope of this paper, were also collected. The discourse com-pletion task was designed to elicit requests in writing. Subjects weregiven a short description of the status-unequal (student/tutor) scenario,which specified the setting, the familiarity and the social power betweenthe participants and were then asked to complete the dialogue, respond-ing as they thought the person in the situation would, thus providing arequesting strategy in English. Through the use of the elicitation instru-ment, a total number of 176 requests were collected, coded and analysed.

Even though the WDCT was the main elicitation instrument used forthe most extensive research project on speech acts today (the CCSARP;Blum-Kulka & Olshtain 1984; Blum-Kulka et al. 1989), and numerouscross-cultural and interlanguage studies have been conducted since thenusing this instrument (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain 1986; Faerch & Kasper1989; Fukushima 1990; Takahashi 1992, Van Mulken 1996; Lee 2005,Woodfield 2006; Economidou-Kogetsidis 2008, 2009), the WDCT hasbeen subjected to a good deal of methodological scrutiny with the em-phasis being on comparing the WDCT data to authentic discourse ordata collected by other means (e.g. multiple choice, role-plays, etc.). Sev-eral methodological comparison studies to date highlight differences inspeech act data elicited from learners according to whether written ororal instruments are employed (Hartford & Bardovi-Harlig 1992; Rin-tell & Mitchell 1989; Sasaki 1998). Golato (2003: 91�92), for example,suggests that WDCTs are inappropriate for studying actual language asthey require participants not to conversationally interact but to ‘articu-late what they believe would be situationally appropriate responseswithin possible, yet imaginary, interactional settings’. Woodfield (2005,2008b) similarly reports on negative comments from research partici-pants regarding both the authenticity of the research tasks and the reli-ability of written responses. Thus, while WDCTs do not offer interactive


language samples, they may offer data of high comparability due to thecontrolled nature of the task (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford 2005: 11).

Yet, while acknowledging its limitations, the WDCT remains an effec-tive method to collect speech act data from a large sample of subjectson a wide range of difficult-to-observe linguistic phenomena (Billmyer &Varghese 2000: 518). The findings of the present study should not beregarded as findings deriving from actual discourse, but rather as find-ings relating to what speakers tend to view as being pragmatically appro-priate linguistic behaviour.

3.3 Data coding and analysis

Each of the elicited requests was analysed and coded with regard tointernal modification (both lexical/phrasal downgraders and syntacticdowngraders), external modification (external mitigating supportivemoves added to the head act), and request perspective. The percentagefrequencies of this analysis were calculated and statistical testing wasconducted in order to establish whether the percentage differences whichemerged were statistically significant. More specifically, Chi-square testsof Independence, being suitable for nominal data, were used for the sta-tistical analyses.

3.3.1 Data coding: The classification schemes

According to Blum-Kulka (1989: 60), internal modifiers are ‘elementswithin the request utterance proper (linked to the head act), the presenceof which is not essential for the utterance to be potentially understoodas a request’. They may act either as downgraders, meant to soften therequest or as upgraders, meant to intensify the coerciveness of a request.Two basic types can be distinguished regarding internal downgraders:syntactic downgraders, such as interrogative, conditional, negative struc-tures and aspect markings, and lexical/phrasal downgraders, comprisinga large number of mitigating devices. The present paper focuses on in-ternal downgraders whose function is to soften the force of the request.Upgraders are beyond the scope of this study. The classification adoptedhere for coding the modification of the collected requests was based onBlum-Kulka et al. (1989), Blum-Kulka & Olshtain (1984) and Edmond-son (1981). A similar classification was employed by numerous interlan-guage and cross-cultural studies (Achiba 2003; Barron 2006; Blum-Kulka 1985; Blum-Kulka & Levenston 1987; Hassall 2001; Schauer2004; Trosborg 1995; Van Mulken 1996). The data classification schemesfor lexical/phrasal downgraders and for syntactic downgraders are pre-sented schematically in Tables 1 and 2 below:


Table 1. Internal modification: The classification scheme � lexical/phrasal downgraders.

Name Definition Devices

Marker ‘please’. ‘An optional element added to ‘please’a request to bid for cooperativebehavior’ (Blum-Kulka et al.1989: 283).

Consultative ‘expressions by means of which ‘would you mind’, ‘do youdevices the speaker seeks to involve the think’, ‘would it be all right

hearer directly bidding for if’, ‘is it/would it be possible’,cooperation’ (Blum-Kulka et ‘do you think I could…’,al. 1989: 283). ‘is it all right?’

Downtoners ‘modifiers which are used by a ‘possibly’, ‘perhaps’, ‘just’,speaker in order to modulate ‘rather’, ‘maybe’the impact his or her request islikely to have on the hearer’(Blum-Kulka et al. 1989: 284).

Understaters/ ‘adverbial modifiers by means ‘a bit’, ‘a little’, ‘sort of’,Hedges of which the speaker under- ‘a kind of”

represents the state of affairsdenoted in the proposition’(Blum-Kulka et al. 1989: 283).

Subjectivisers ‘elements in which the speaker ‘I’m afraid’, ‘I wonder’,explicitly expresses his or her ‘I think/suppose’subjective opinion vis-a-vis thestate of affairs referred to inthe proposition, thus loweringthe assertive force of therequest’ (Blum-Kulka et al.1989: 284).

Cajolers ‘conventionalized, addressee- ‘You know’, ‘You see …’oriented modifiers whosefunction is to make thingsclearer for the addressee andinvite him/her to meta-phorically participate in thespeech act’ (Sifianou 1992: 180).

Appealers Addressee-oriented elements ‘Clean the table dear, willoccurring in a syntactically you? ………….. ok/ right?’).final position. They may signalturn-availability and ‘are usedby the speaker whenever he orshe wishes to appeal to his orher hearer’s benevolentunderstanding’ (Blum-Kulkaet al. 1989: 285).


Table 2. Internal modification: The classification scheme � syntactic downgraders.

Name Example

Conditional structures ‘Could you give me an extension for a few days?’

Conditional clause ‘… if it’s possible to have an extension for theassignment.’

Tense1 ‘Is it all right if I asked for an extension?’

Aspect2 ‘I was wondering if it’s possible to have an extension forthe assignment.’

Interrogative3 ‘Will you do the cooking tonight?’

Negation of preparatory ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of an extension?’condition

1 According to Blum-Kulka et al. (1989: 283), past tense forms are coded as down-graders only if they are used with present time reference and can therefore be substi-tuted by present tense forms without changing the semantic meaning of the utter-ance.

2 Also according to Blum-Kulka et al. (1989: 282), the durative aspect marker countsas a mitigator only if it can be substituted by a simple form (e.g. ‘I’m wondering’vs. ‘I wonder’).

3 Preparatory request strategies of the form ‘can you/could you’ are not treated assyntactic downgraders and therefore not included in this category (Blum-Kulka etal. 1989), since the interrogative in these cases is unmarked.

Unlike internal modification, external modification does not affect theutterance used for realising the act, but rather the context in which it isembedded, and thus indirectly modifies the illocutionary force. This typeof modification takes place in the form of supportive moves occurringeither before or after the head act. As with internal modification, exter-nal modification might serve to either soften or emphasise the force ofthe whole request. The present study examined those external modifierswhose function is to soften the request through the use of mitigatingsupportive moves.

The classification followed here is based on the classification adoptedby the CCSARP project (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain 1984; Blum-Kulkaet al. 1989) and a number of other scholars (Blum-Kulka 1985; Blum-Kulka & Levenston 1987; Trosborg 1995; Van Mulken 1996; Barron2006; Schauer 2007), with a number of additions and modificationsas deemed necessary by the collected data. The data classificationscheme for external modification is presented schematically in Table 3below:


Table 3. External modification: The classification scheme � supportive moves.

Name Definition Example

Grounder a clause which can either ‘I would like an assignmentprecede or follow a request extension because I couldand allows the speaker to not deal the typing time.’give reasons, explanations,or justifications for his orher request

Disarmer a phrase with which ‘the ‘I know that this assignmentspeaker tries to remove any is important but could youpotential objections the …..?’hearer might raise uponbeing confronted with therequest’ (Blum-Kulka et al.1989: 287)

Preparator The speaker prepares the ‘I really need a favour ….’hearer for the ensuingrequest.

Getting a precommitment The speaker checks on a ‘Could you do me apotential refusal before favour?’.performing the request bytrying to get the hearer tocommit.

Promise The speaker makes a ‘Could you give me anpromise to be fulfilled extension? I promise I’llupon completion of the have it ready by tomorrow.’.requested act.

Imposition minimiser ‘the speaker tries to reduce ‘I would like to ask for anthe imposition placed on extension. Just for a fewthe hearer by his request’ days.’(Blum-Kulka et al. 1989:288).

Apology The speaker apologises for ‘I’m very sorry but I needposing the request and/or an extension on thisfor the imposition incurred. project.’

Discourse Orientation opening discourse moves ‘You know the seminarmove which serve an orientation paper I’m supposed to be

function but do not giving on the 29th ….’necessarily mitigate oraggravate the request inany way

Regarding the perspective of the request, a request can be realised fromthe viewpoint of the Hearer, the Speaker, or both participants. A furtheroption also exists where any explicit mentioning of the agents is (deliber-ately) avoided (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989: 278). In cases of embedded


structures, the coding is related to the verb in the Head Act. The codingof the request perspective therefore took the following form:

Hearer dominance: ‘I cannot submit my coursework on time. Can yougive me an extension?’

Speaker dominance: ‘Hi, I would like an assignment extension because Icould not deal the typing time.’

Joint perspective: ‘I’ve got a problem. I’m not going to be able to givethe seminar paper on Tuesday. Could we make it thefollowing week?’

Impersonal: ‘You know I couldn’t normally ask but I’m snowedunder at the moment. Is there any chance for an ex-tension?’

4. Results and discussion

In the presentation of results, the illustrative examples will be drawnmore extensively from the Greek learner participants as this groupformed the majority of learners taking part in the study.

4.1 Internal modification

Tables 4 and 5 summarise the quantitative analysis of internal modifica-tion of requests through lexical/phrasal and syntactic downgraders. Sig-nificant differences between the learner and native speaker participantswere evident in three areas: (i) learner over-use of zero marking in syn-tactic and lexical/phrasal internal modification, (ii) learner under-use ofthe politeness marker please, the consultative device and the cajoler and(iii) learner underuse of the syntactic downgrader ‘tense’. We will dealwith each of these significant differences in turn:

Table 4. Internal modification: lexical /phrasal downgraders.

Zero Marker Consulative Down- Understaters/ Subjecti- Cajolers Appealersmarking please devices toners Hedges visers

Learners 34/89 15/89 22/89 6/89 6/89 3/89 0/89 3/8938.2 % 16.9 % 24.71 % 6.74 % 6.74 % 3.37 % 0 % 3.37 %

Native 17/87 30/87 38/87 4/87 8/87 8/87 4/87 2/872.29 %speakers 19.54 % 4.48 % 43.67 % 4.59 % 9.19 % 9.19 % 4.59 %

Chi- x2�7.445 x2�7.184 x2�7.038 x2�0.377 x2�0.362 x2�2.547 x2�4.187 x2�0.183square df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1test p�0.006** p�0.007** p�0.008** p�0.539 p�0.548 p�0.110 p�0.041* p�0.669results NS NS NS NS

*p significant at a p w 0.05**p significant at a p w 0.01


Table 5. Internal modification: syntactic downgraders.

Zero Conditional Conditional Tense Aspect Interroga- Negation ofmarking Structures Clause tive prep. condition

Learners 57/89 13/89 14/89 15/89 2/89 0/89 0/8964.04 % 14.60 % 15.73 % 16.85 % 2.24 % 0 % 0 %

English 43/87 17/87 10/87 27/87 7/87 0/87 1/87native 49.42 % 19.54 % 11.49 % 31.03 % 8.04 % 0 % 1.14 %speakers

Chi-square x2�3.833 x2�0.757 x2�0.670 x2�4.869 x2�3.049 N/A x2�1.029test results df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1

p�0.050* p�0.384 p�0.413 p�0.027* p�0.081 p�0.310

*p significant at a p w 0.05

First, in comparing the overall use of lexical/phrasal and syntactic de-vices for downgrading their requests, the learners overused zero markingby failing to internally modify their requests as compared to nativespeakers. The first two examples below illustrate such zero marking fordowngraders in the learner data while (3) and (4) demonstrate the useof lexical/phrasal downgrading (consultative device) and syntactic down-grading (tense, conditional clause) respectively in the native speakerdata.

(1) Hello. It’s great need. I had serious personal problems and I need totake extension for the assignment of your lesson. (Greek learner)

(2) I cannot submit my coursework on time. Can you give me an exten-sion? (German learner)

(3) I could do my seminar next … but I want to do a good job, so wouldit be possible to postpone it until …? (NS)

(4) I’m really sorry but I’m having real trouble with my assignment andI wondered whether I could have an extension. (NS)

The findings relating to the learners’ overuse of zero marking throughlexical/phrasal downgraders as compared to native speakers is consistentwith findings from other studies. Trosborg (1995: 256) identified an un-deruse of lexical/phrasal downgraders in her study in the oral requestsof Danish learners of English at all three educational levels as comparedto the native speaker participants. Similarly, Otcu & Zeyrek (2006: 9)observed lower frequencies of lexical/phrasal and syntactic modificationin lower intermediate and upper intermediate Turkish undergraduatelearners as compared to English native speakers on interactive role-plays, with higher frequencies evident for both types of downgraders inthe more proficient group suggesting possible development in this area.


Further studies investigating ESL learners’ use of internal modifiers onwritten elicitation tasks (House & Kasper 1987; Hill 1997; Woodfield2007; Economidou-Kogetsidis 2008, 2009) have also supplied evidencethat intermediate and advanced learners internally modify their requestsless frequently than native speakers overall in request production whileHassall (2001: 263) observes that the Australian learners of Indonesianin his study ‘rarely use internal modifiers’. These findings are not cor-roborated in all studies, however, and Faerch & Kasper (1989) reporthigher frequencies of syntactic and lexical/phrasal internal modificationby Danish learners of English as compared to native speakers in all threeof the situations analysed.

In explaining the patterns of zero marking in internal modification inour learner data, it is interesting to note Bardovi-Harlig’s (1999) obser-vation concerning the degree of linguistic competence which is presup-posed in downgraders:

In play-downs [past tense, progressive, modals, negation, interroga-tive] a speaker draws on knowledge of modals, tense and aspect, andon syntactic knowledge of negation and question formation. Withhedges and understaters a speaker must have enough syntax to prop-erly position them in the sentence. With consultative devices andscopestaters a learner needs knowledge of the complements that par-ticular formulas take and with agent avoiders, the learner needs toknow formation and use of passive. (1999: 690�691)

In addition to the linguistic competence required in internal modifica-tion, appeals may be made to the extra processing effort required to addcomplex structures to bare head acts as Trosborg observes (1995: 428�429). The learners in the present study were, however, engaged in writtenrequests and therefore had time to plan their utterances and draw ontheir existing pragmalinguistic repertoire. Despite this ‘reduced proc-essing task’ (Hassall 2001: 271) and, in the case of the Japanese andGerman learners, the scaffolded support available through paired in-teraction (Storch 1998), the learners in this study evidently had difficultyin modifying their requests internally overall. With regard to the findingconcerning significant differences in zero marking of syntactic down-graders between the learner and native speaker groups, it is possible thatthe learners were not so extensively aware of the mitigating function ofsyntactic downgraders: as Faerch & Kasper (1989: 237) observe: ‘themitigating function of syntactic downgraders is not inherent in the gram-matical meaning of syntactic structures: it is a pragmatic, “acquired”meaning that derives from the interaction of the structure with its


context and requires … extra inferencing capacity on the part of the ad-dressee’.

Here we turn to the second finding regarding internal modification,learners’ underuse of the marker ‘please’, the consultative device and thecajoler. Regarding this marker, our findings do not corroborate those ofseveral previous studies (Otcu & Zeyrek 2006; House & Kasper 1987;Faerch & Kasper 1989; Barron 2003) and thus require explanation andcomment. It was noted above that Faerch & Kasper (1989: 232�233)identify a learner preference for this lexical marker in their study, ex-plaining this finding through learner preference for clarity and unambig-uous means of expression. In the present study, the majority of learnerswere of Greek origin and thus it is possible that language transfer wasat play. The Greek marker parakalo is employed more commonly withdirect strategies such as imperative requests (e.g. ‘Please look after thekids for a few hours’), elliptical sentence structures (e.g. ‘Steak and chipsplease!’), direct questions (e.g. ‘Where’s the post office please?’) and wantstatements (‘Please, I wanted to book a ticket to England’ � transl. fromGreek) (Economidou-Kogetsidis 2005, 2008, 2009) in contrast with theuse of ‘please’ in English, which is commonly used both intrasentiallyand extrasentially with conventionally indirect requests (‘Can/could youdo P’). Two examples (5) and (6) from the Greek learners’ requests il-lustrate this usage:

(5) Excuse me sir, could you give me an extension because somethinghappened and I would like only two days please.

(6) I have a very serious health problem and I would like a week’s exten-sion for my assignment please.

Turning to the findings regarding the consultative device as an internalmodifier, our results regarding learners’ underuse of this marker are inkeeping with Trosborg (1995: 260), who notes infrequent use in the re-quests of the learner and native speaker groups in her study. Consulta-tive devices are a means by which ‘a speaker seeks to involve the hearerdirectly bidding for cooperation’ (Blum-Kulka et al 1989: 283). There isevidence from research into learners in study abroad contexts to suggestthat such devices may already form part of the interlanguage of Germanlearners of English at the start of their sojourn (Schauer 2004: 266).

In explaining this learner underuse of consultative devices in the pres-ent study, appeals may be made to Brown & Levinson’s (1978, 1987)positive and negative politeness distinction. Even though Brown &Levinson’s (1978, 1987) conceptualisation of politeness as the realisationof face-threat mitigation and as a universal aspect of language usage has


come under considerable criticism in the 1990s (e.g. Matsumoto 1989;Ide 1989; Watts et al. [1992] 2005), and in recent years (e.g. Kasper 2006;Locher 2004; Mills 2003; Spencer-Oatey 2000; Watts 2003, 2005; Wattset al. 2005) (for an extensive discussion on this see Watts 2005), theirdistinction between positive and negative politeness seems to offer avalid explanation of our results here. Without making claims that thispositive/negative politeness distinction can safely be applied to all cul-tures (and research findings have indeed shown that it cannot), it seemsto be able to explain some of the differences in the politeness orientationsof the Greek and British culture. Whereas the Greeks have been found toemphasise solidarity, informality and in-group relations (Economidou-Kogetsidis 2003, 2005, 2008; Pavlidou 1994, 1997, 1998; Sifianou 1992,2001 [1989]) � the characteristics of positive politeness � it has beensuggested in some studies that the British value individuality, tact, indi-rectness and avoiding impositions (Economidou-Kogetsidis 2003, 2004,2005, 2008; Fukushima 2000; Placencia 1992; Scollon & Scollon 1983;Wierzbicka 2003 [1991]). Structures such as the consultative device(‘would you mind’, ‘do you think’, ‘would it be all right if’, ‘is it/wouldit be possible’, ‘do you think I could …’, ‘is it all right?’) can be seenas functioning as negative politeness devices whose role is to minimiseimpositions and imply social distance between interactants (Economi-dou-Kogetsidis 2008: 127; Sifianou 1992).

Similar to the findings regarding consultative devices, the learners’ useof cajolers was significantly underused in the learner data as comparedto the native speakers. Such devices are essentially addressee-orientedand function in an interpersonal way to involve the interlocutor directlyin the speech act. Elsewhere in ILP research, the findings have not beenconclusive: Trosborg (1995: 263) observes that interpersonal markerswere used infrequently by learners at all levels in her study, while Otcu &Zeyrek (2006: 9) report a regressive pattern in the use of cajolers withthe upper-intermediate learners demonstrating a move away from nativespeaker patterns. In the present study, there were no cases where learnersemployed the use of this device and in the absence of further empiricalevidence we hypothesise that such interpersonal markers may be sensi-tive to the elicitation instrument and thus more in evidence in studiesexamining speech acts in interaction although the findings from Tros-borg (1995) suggest that this may not be the case. Two examples fromthe native speaker data in our study appear below as illustration:

(7) You know that I work hard, but please can I have an extension thisonce? (NS)


(8) I’m struggling to meet the deadline for this assignment. Could yougrant me an extension please? You know I wouldn’t ask normallyunless I had a good reason. (NS)

The final part of this discussion on internal modification patterns turnsto the learners’ significant underuse of tense as a syntactic modificationdevice in the present study. Our results are seen to support several ILPstudies which observe the absence of marking for tense in syntactic modi-fication of requests (Sasaki 1998; Woodfield 2006, 2007) or under-use ofsuch marking (Trosborg 1995: 246) in relation to native speakers. Inexplaining this finding, we have observed the lack of transparency in themitigating function of past tense structures for learners for whom suchpragmalinguistic devices may take time to acquire. In support of thisexplanation, appeals may be made to Andersen and Shirai’s (1996) hy-pothesis concerning the acquisitional sequence for simple past. Accord-ing to this sequence the pragmatic function of simple past as a ‘softener’may be the final function to be acquired (cited in Bardovi-Harlig (1999:695). In addition there is evidence to suggest a disassociation of pasttense forms with nonpast contexts in some learners (Bardovi-Harlig1999: 696). To the extent that this may be the case, it is possible that thelearners in our study had not developed their form�function networksto a robust level such that they were confident in using past tense formsas present time mitigating devices.

4.2 External modification

Table 6 below summarises the quantitative analysis of external modifica-tion of requests through supportive moves. Statistically significant differ-ences between the learner and native speaker participants were evidentin three areas: (i) learner over-use of preparators, (ii) learner underuseof imposition minimisers, and (iii) learner underuse of an apology forposing the request and/or for the imposition incurred.

Apart from the significant differences revealed, results also confirmedthat the grounder is perhaps the most frequent supportive move, notonly in native English requests but also in interlanguage requests, a find-ing which agrees with the evidence from several interlanguage studies(Blum-Kulka & Olshtain 1986; Faerch & Kasper 1989; Hassall 2001;Woodfield 2004; Felix-Brasdefer 2007; Schauer 2007 � see section 2above). The extensive reliance of the speakers on the grounder is notunexpected as this external modifier, which provides reasons and expla-nation for the request being made, is a very basic constituent of therequesting act (Schauer 2007).


Table 6. External Modification: Supportive moves.

Zero Grounder Disarmer Preparator Getting Promise Imposition Apology Discoursemarking a precom- minimiser Orienta-

mitment tion move

Learners 19/89 64/89 4/89 8/89 0/89 0/89 4/89 4/89 0/8921.34 % 71.91 % 4.49 % 8.98 % 0 % 0 % 4.49 % 4.49 % 0 %

English 19/87 60/87 7/87 2/87 0/87 0/87 0/87 12/87 1/87native 21.83 % 68.96 % 8.04 % 2.29 % 0 % 0 % 0 % 13.79 % 1.14 %speakers

Chi- x2�0.006 x2�0.183 x2�0.947 x2�3.674 N/A N/A x2�4.001 x2�4.603 x2�1.029square df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1test p�0.937 p�0.669 p�0.330 p�0.055** p�0.045* p�0.032* p�0.494results NS NS NS NS

*p significant at a p w 0.05

This result also seems to point towards the fact that the grounder isacquired by learners quite early on, probably due to the fact that offeringexplanations and/or justifications for the request does not require knowl-edge of idiomatic (i.e. native-like) use and simply involves the construc-tion of a new, often syntactically simple clause. Hassall (2001: 274) alsoargues that external modifiers in general tend to be syntactically lessdemanding and pragmalinguistically less complex, as ‘the addition ofsupportive moves will not generally result in more complex pragmalingu-istic structures to be planned’. In Schauer’s findings (2007: 204), thegrounder is also among the first external modifiers to be used by all thelearners in the initial data collection session shortly after the learnershad arrived in the target environment. This result also seems to supportthe argument that the grounder is acquired by learners relatively earlyon, something which might explain its widespread use.

Although no statistically significant differences were revealed betweenthe learners and the native speakers as far as the frequency of thegrounder is concerned, a closer examination of the data collected revealsinteresting qualitative differences regarding the content of the grounderoffered. Bardovi-Harlig (2001) notes that content is one of the ways inwhich NSs and NNSs may differ in their contribution, and a number ofstudies (Takahashi & Beebe 1987; Beebe et al. 1990) have found thateven in cases where the two ‘use the same semantic formulas, the contentthat they encode may be strikingly different’ (Bardovi-Harlig 2001: 18).In the present study, our data interestingly reveal that while the nativespeakers generally employed rather vague explanations and reasons, thelearners went into much greater detail by providing specific reasonsand explanations, primarily concerning matters of poor health, familyemergencies and so on. Reference to the value of honesty was also madeon the part of some learners (examples [11] and [12]).


The examples below illustrate the contrast:

(9) Excuse me would it be possible for me to have an extension for myassignment. I just need more time. (NS)

(10) Hello, how are you? The reason I’m here is that I really need asmall extension on the project as I have been working full-time andI’m really pressured on both sides. I feel that I will get ill one of thesedays. (Greek learner)

(11) Mr Clark, I’m desperate. I need an extension for my assignment.Can you help me to solve this problem? I’d like to be honest withyou but last night I was drunk. (Greek learner)

Unlike the use of the grounder, which did not involve statistically signifi-cant differences between the learners and the native speakers, significantdifferences were evident in the use of preparators and imposition mini-misers (see Table 6). More specifically, the learner group significantlyoverused these devices by preparing the hearer for the ensuing request(see example [12]) and by trying to reduce the imposition placed on thehearer by their request (see example [13]):

(12) Hello. I would like to be honest with you [preparator]. So I am askingyou an extension for my assignment, if possible … because my com-puter has broken down and I am unable to hand in my assignmenton time. (Greek learner)

(13) Hello Mr … I would like to ask for an extension. Just for a fewdays [imposition minimiser] because I had a problem and I needjust a few days more [imposition minimiser] please. (Greek learner)

The learners’ over-reliance on such supportive moves may also find itsroots in their lack of confidence resulting from their non-native linguisticproficiency (Economidou-Kogesidis 2009) and their social role as over-seas students (Pellegrino 2005). House & Kasper (1987) also commenton ‘the insecure social status associated with the foreigner role’ as beinga reason why learners employ more supportive moves’ (1987: 1285). Thismight be particularly important in the academic encounter examined asthe status balance needs to be maintained and students must perform arequest to a higher status interlocutor. Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford(1993), when examining the acquisition of pragmatic competence in aca-demic advising sessions noted how nonnative speaker students differedfrom native speakers in their ability to employ appropriate speech actsand negotiate successfully. This over-reliance on preparators and imposi-tion minimisers on the part of the learners might therefore serve as a


form of compensation for their lack of confidence both as speakers andas university students.

Unlike the fact that the learners overused these devices, this was notthe case with the use of an apology. The learners were found to signifi-cantly underuse the apology as a supportive move for their requests. Asthe majority of the learner participants of the study were Greek nativespeakers, this result might be the result of pragmalinguistic transfer.While in English overt expressions of apologies and thanks are widelyused and are in line with the society’s emphasis on individuality and tact(Scollon & Scollon 1983; Sifianou 1992, 2001 [1989]; Wierzbicka 2003[1991]; Economidou-Kogetsidis 2003, 2004, 2005) (i.e. the negative as-pect of face) (Brown & Levinson 1978, 1987), in Greek, where emphasisis on the positive aspect of face (Brown & Levinson 1978, 1987) (i.e. oninvolvement, spontaneity and often directness) (Sifianou 1992, 2001[1989]; Pavlidou 1994, 1997, 1998; Makri-Tsilipakou 2001; Economidou-Kogetsidis 2003, 2005, 2008), such overt apologies are often seen as un-necessary or reserved for what they consider to be very serious offences(Economidou-Kogetsidis 2008).

4.2.1 Orientation moves: management of shared knowledge

In this section we report on one discoursal aspect of the native speakerrequests which we feel is worthy of note. In establishing our taxonomyfor external modification, we identified a discourse move, which seemsto be neutral with regard to mitigation and which we identify as an‘orientation move’. Further examples of such orientation moves in nativespeaker requests are identified in Woodfield (2007a). In our corpus weidentified only one such instance in the native speaker data ([14] below),and no instances in the learner corpus. This move occurs in sentence-initial position, and seems to function interpersonally in several ways:

(14) You know the seminar paper I’m supposed to be giving on the 29th �I’m having a bit of trouble getting it finished ‘cos I’ve just starteda new teaching job and I can’t find the time to get the reading doneat the moment. I was wondering if there’s any chance of changingthe date? Would that be OK?

The orientation move in this native speaker’s request functions not onlyto establish the focus of the request but also operates at an interpersonallevel, serving to establish the extent of shared knowledge between thespeaker and hearer and in doing so, decreasing the sense of social dis-tance and increasing a sense of solidarity and involvement in the dis-course. In a sense, such moves function in a similar way to ‘Heads’


identified in the discourse of spoken grammar (Carter & McCarthy 1995,1997) providing an ‘interactive space in which [speakers] can highlight atopic in such a way as to provide an orientation to their listeners forwhat will follow’ (Carter & McCarthy 1995: 210). We are unaware of anyevidence concerning such moves in pragmatics studies to date employingdiscourse completion tasks, but the use of ‘interpersonal markers’ asinternal modification devices have been noted elsewhere. For example,Trosborg, while observing that such markers were used infrequently bythe learners in her study, notes that ‘interpersonal markers are very im-portant for establishing and maintaining harmony between two inter-locutors and these markers are no doubt needed in situations in whichthe requester’s face is threatened’ (1995: 263). However, the interpersonalmarkers identified in Trosborg’s study are restricted to lexical/phrasaldevices (internal modification) and do not carry the orientational dis-course function as in the external modification move identified in (14).

In explaining the infrequency of this move in our native speaker data,it is possible that methodological and/or social effects were at play. First,the utterance in (14) represented the final written response to the taskfrom one of the three pairs of native speakers (see above section 3.1).These participants were able to rehearse their responses orally prior tothe written formulation, thus this mode of data collection (paired verbalreport) may have encouraged the use of more of an interpersonal dimen-sion to the request formulations although such a claim would need tobe verifed empirically. Secondly, such interpersonal moves may havebeen linked to these participants’ perceptions of a sense of equality withtheir tutor as suggested by verbal report data accompanying such writtentasks (Woodfield 2004, 2006). The graduate students in (14) above weremid-career professionals and such orientation moves may have beenused to encode a sense of solidarity and equality with their (hypotheti-cal) tutor.

Such orientation moves in our study were, however, absent in thelearner corpus. Indeed, it seems that the management of shared know-ledge in interactive requests may create a challenge for some learners.As noted in 2.2 above, non-native effects were identified in the externalmodification moves in Hassall’s study. In this investigation, Hassall(2001: 270) observes (i) learner use of overexplicit discourse linkers ‘toclarify the logical relation between Grounder and head act’ and (ii) therepeated inclusion of the first person pronoun (saya ‘I/my’) throughoutthe Grounder. Both these features, Hassall maintains, served to ‘conveyan impression of a lack of shared knowledge between speaker andhearer, which in turn created a sense of increased social distance betweenthe interlocutors’ (emphasis added). This tendency towards such overexplicitness in the learner data through the use of first (and second)


person pronouns has also been noted in other studies (Scarcella & Bru-nak 1981, cited in Hassall 2001: 276) and was also apparent, but notextensive, in our corpus. Example (15) below from one of the Japanesepairs serves to illustrate such non-native effects both in (i) the learners’use of an explicit discourse linker (as in Hassall’s 2001 study) and (ii)the overuse of first and second person pronouns across the request asa whole:

(15) Could you give an extension for giving you a seminar paper becauseI had tried to finish but I couldn’t. (Japanese learner)

Returning to the example in (14) above, orientation moves seem to servean important interpersonal function in the performance of requests, bothat a discourse level to create a sense of shared knowledge between inter-locutors and at a social level to reduce social distance. It would be inter-esting to note in future investigations both (i) the extent to which suchmoves are a function of the elicitation method, and (ii) how such movesin interlanguage requests develop as evidenced in longitudinal investiga-tions.

4.3 Perspective

We observed above (section 2.3) that with the exception of a few studies(Ellis 1992, 1997; Blum-Kulka & Levenston 1987; Felix-Brasdefer 2007),there has been little investigation in the cross-cultural and interlanguagepragmatics literature to date into learner and native speaker use of per-spective in the encoding of speech acts. In the analysis of request per-spective in such studies, four dimensions have been identified (speaker,hearer, joint, or impersonal) according to the role emphasised in therequestive act (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989: 19). The following examplesfrom our corpus serve to illustrate these four perspectives:

(16) Speaker-oriented: Hi, I would like an assignment extension becauseI could not deal the typing time. (Greek ESL learner)

(17) Hearer-oriented: I cannot submit my coursework on time. Can yougive me an extension?. (Greek ESL learner)

(18) Joint: I’ve got a problem. I’m not going to be able to give theseminar paper on Tuesday. Could we make it the following week?

(English native speaker)

(19) Impersonal: You know I couldn’t normally ask but I’m snowed un-der at the moment. Is there any chance for an extension?

(English native speaker).


In total, 89 learner responses were analysed for perspective. In the nativespeaker corpus, four responses were propositionally incomplete and twoparticipants did not provide a request, thus a total of 83 responseswere analysed.

The findings regarding request perspective in our corpus are summa-rised in Table 7:

Table 7. Analysis of perspective (ENS n � 83 ESL learners n � 89).

Hearer Speaker Joint Impersonal Total

Native 7/83 62/83 1/83 13/83 83speakers 8.43 % 74.69 % 1.20 % 15.66 % 99.98 %

Learners 21/89 67/89 0/89 1/89 8923.59 % 75.28 % 0 % 1.12 % 99.99 %

Chi-square x2�7.244 x2�0.008 x2�1.079 x2�12.142 n/atest results df�1 df�1 df�1 df�1

p�0.007* p�0.930 p�0.299 p�0.000**NS NS

First, within the learner data, there is a preference for speaker perspec-tive overall and this pattern mirrored that employed by the nativespeaker group as illustrated in (20) and (21). Speaker perspective formed75.28 percent of the learner requests, approximating the native speakerlevels (74.69 percent): this compared to 23.59 percent of the learner re-quests which encoded Hearer perspective. This finding is consistent withthe developmental patterns found in Ellis’ (1992, 1997) and Trosborg’s(1995) studies. While Ellis (1997: 186) notes that most requests in theyoung learners in his classroom investigation emphasised the role of thehearer, ‘reflecting a preponderance of mood-derivable utterances in thedata’, the speaker perspective became more strongly evident ‘as learnersacquire other types of requests (i.e. query preparatory, and want state-ments)’. In her cross-sectional study, Trosborg (1995) notes a shift tospeaker-based strategies with increase in educational level. As the learn-ers in our study were relatively advanced, consisting of undergraduateand graduate students, they had already developed a range of forms forperforming their requests (including query preparatory strategies, needand want statements). Thus it is possible that developments in the learn-ers’ overall pragmalinguistic repertoire in terms of the range of head actsemployed may partially explain the predominance of speaker perspectivein the learner data. A second explanation for this finding may stem fromthe number of want and need statements as illustrated in (21) below.Such statements formed 26.9 percent of the requests for the learnersoverall (as compared to 6.02 percent of the native speaker requests) and


so speaker perspective in the learner data was more strongly associatedwith want and need statements as compared to the native speaker re-quests. Two examples from the learner data serve to illustrate the use ofspeaker perspective:

(20) Excuse me but I couldn’t finish my paper yet. I need more time.Could I continue for a while? (Japanese learner)

(21) I need an extension because I was ill and I could not do it on time.(Greek learner)

The second finding relates to differences in learner and native speakerfrequencies of use of impersonal perspective. Here, the native speakersmade significantly greater use of impersonal perspective (15.66 percent)as compared with the learners (1.12 percent). This pattern is mirrored inthe learners’ tendency overall (98.87 percent of requests) to employeither Hearer perspective or Speaker perspective in their requests for anextension. A qualitative investigation of the thirteen requests in the na-tive speaker data coded for impersonal perspective (see example [19]above) indicates that seven of these requests were associated with formu-laic patterns around the lexical item ‘chance’ (exemplified in [22�25]below): interestingly, such constructions were apparent in the one re-quest in the learner corpus (26) employing impersonal perspective. Inturn, these constructions in the native speaker corpus were evident intandem with internal mitigation devices such as negative supposition(22), past tense/aspect marking (23) and conditional structures (24). Fi-nally, in the native speaker data, impersonal perspective was also associ-ated with elliptical forms, as in (25).

Examples from the native speaker data:

(22) I haven’t started the assignment yet. I don’t suppose there’s anychance of an extension?

(23) X, you know the seminar paper I’m supposed to be giving on the29th � I’m having a bit of trouble getting it finished ’cos I’ve juststarted a new teaching job and I can’t find the time to get thereading done at the moment. I was wondering if there’s any chanceof changing the date?

(24) I’ve been having some difficulty completing this assignment. Wouldthere be a chance of an extension?

(25) I have had problems with my assignment. Any chance for an extracouple of days to do it properly?


Example from the learner data:

(26) Is there any chance that I could get an extension before my assign-ment?

The findings in this study regarding the low frequency of impersonalperspective overall accord with those from Ellis’ (1992, 1997) study oftwo young learners’ interlanguage requests and Rose’s (1992) method-ologically-driven investigation of American English requests. Ellis (1997:186) observes that ‘very few utterances encode a joint or impersonalperspective’ noting only 3 such requests in the learner corpus duringthe period of investigation. Rose, investigating adult American Englishstudents’ responses to six WDCTs (�/� hearer response) similarly ob-serves few requests employing impersonal perspective overall in relationto other perspectives (Rose 1992: 55). Of the six scenarios investigatedin Rose’s study, the analysis of perspective in the written requests for anextension to a tutor mirrored that of the present study, with participantspreferring speaker perspective overall and using impersonal perspectiveon a small proportion of their responses. These quantitative patterns arenot represented, however, in Blum-Kulka & Levenston’s (1987) study ofnative speaker and learners of Hebrew and English where overrepresen-tation of impersonal requests in the learner data was found to be linkedto processes of lexical simplification (Blum-Kulka & Levenston 1987:160). In this latter study, where both groups used the same impersonalperspective, they were found to differ in choice of lexical item, reflectinga different underlying perspective (Blum-Kulka 1991).

In sum, the quantitative analysis of perspective in the corpus of re-quests in the present study found significant differences between thelearner and native speakers in the frequency of requests encoding imper-sonal perspective with the native speakers employing more extensive useof these constructions and in association with a range of mitigating,elliptical, and formulaic devices. Second, both groups displayed a prefer-ence for Speaker perspective overall. Third, significant differences wereevident in the use of Hearer perspective reflecting the more extensiveuse of impersonal perspective in the native speaker data. Finally jointperspective was evident in only one token in the corpus overall.

4.4 Limitations of the study

Turning to the limitations of the study, we would highlight three points.First, the data in the present study were collected through a writtendiscourse completion task which, as we acknowledge above (3.2), hasbeen extensively criticised in the interlanguage pragmatics literature. As


a non-interactive instrument (Felix-Brasdefer 2008a) which yields lan-guage samples which are ‘neither interactive, nor consequential’ (Bar-dovi-Harlig & Hartford 2005: 11), the DCT is limited in scope to a toolfor accessing pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge. We areaware of the move in pragmatics research towards capturing more au-thentic, interactive data (Cohen 2004, 2007; Kasper 2008) but at thesame time maintain that the participant responses provided in the pres-ent study do provide insights into learners’ pragmalinguistic knowledge.Secondly, we have not considered the impact of length of stay on speechact performance (Matsumura 2001; DuFon & Churchill 2006): in thepresent study the length of stay of the learners in the host environmentvaried from 6 months to 4 years and possible effects of this factor onlearner variation in production should be acknowledged. Thirdly, thelearner participant profile was limited to undergraduate and post gradu-ate students and thus the findings may not be generalisable to othersocial groups.

4.5 Implications for learner development

The findings of this study strongly suggest that even at advanced levelsof proficiency and in a study abroad context, ESL learners’ pragmaticperformance may reveal important pragmatic deviations from that ofnative speakers. This seems to agree with a number of studies whichfound that ‘advanced learners make only modest progress in pragmaticseven over long sojourns’ (Barron 2006; Hoffman-Hicks 2000; Regan1995, cited in Hassall 2006: 32) and that ‘advanced learners remain non-native in even quite basic pragmatic knowledge and aspects of pragmaticperformance after a sojourn of one year’s length or more’ (Hassall2006: 32).

These pragmatic deviations on the part of the non-native speakers canhave serious implications for the learners when interacting with speakersof the target language. ESL learners, by virtue of living in the targetenvironment (e.g. as university students), have an increased need forsuccessful interaction, and at university, interacting with academic staffis an important communicative task for students. Yet the learners maynot only fail to accomplish their communicative goals, but their devia-tions from the target language can lead both to pragmalinguistic andsociopragmatic failure (Thomas 1983). Interlanguage requestive devia-tion might violate social appropriateness in the target language in manyimportant dimensions, therefore causing important social misunder-standings.

More specifically, such deviations on the type and amount of internaland external request modification, may have a distorting effect on the


pragmatic force of the utterance. The underuse of the marker pleaseor that of an apology, for example, particularly in power-asymmetricalsituations, may lead English native speakers to view such requests asbrusque and lacking respect. Over-reliance on external modifiers such aspreparators and/or imposition minimisers, on the other hand, might alsomake the non-native speakers appear desperate or pushy and as failingto show acceptance of the power asymmetry existing in the relationship.The over-use of external modification devices can easily result in longerutterances which are also capable of violating social norms. Blum-Kulka & Olshtain (1986) argue that verbosity violates the quantitymaxim and might cause pragmatic failure if it creates a lack of appropri-ateness, which might consequently make the hearer react with impa-tience. Also, over-informativeness related to longer external modifica-tions (i.e. elaborating the background, the preconditions, the reasons,etc.) might cause the speaker to be judged more harshly on the maximof relevance as it can obscure the request which is to follow.

Unlike learners’ obvious grammatical and syntactic errors, such prag-matic failure is rarely recognised as such by non-linguists, especially inthe case of advanced learners whose high linguistic proficiency oftenleads native speakers to expect high pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig et al. 1991). The present study therefore has implications for thelearning of pragmatics by advanced learners during study abroad, espe-cially through exposure to the informal learning environment. Hassall(2006) refers to a case study of himself during a three-month sojourn inIndonesia and reveals that ‘the informal learning environment can be apowerful stimulus for the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge’ (2006: 52)during even a short sojourn. Yet he argues that for this pragmatic know-ledge to be shaped and re-shaped, learners’ conscious attention (inciden-tal or intentional) to the pragmatic input available is crucial (Schmidt1993). Indeed, although study abroad seems to offer students a largeamount of L2 input and many opportunities for output, in reality itappears that appropriate input is not guaranteed (Barron 2006: 67). Ithas been argued that a basic reason for this is learners’ lack of involve-ment in the host culture (Churchill & DuFon 2006), even during studyabroad contexts (Barron 2006).

The findings of this study also have implications for the developmentof pragmatic competence in ESL pedagogy, and thus in more formalsettings. The inclusion of pragmatics in language teaching/learning hasbeen supported by a number of scholars (Bardovi-Harlig et al. 1991;Bardovi-Harlig 1992, 1996; Bouton 1996; Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei1998; Kasper & Rose 2001; Rose & Kasper 2001; Crandall & Basturk-men 2004; Woodfield 2006). More specifically, there are two pedagogicalimplications concerning the results of this study: the first relates to the


inclusion of pragmatics in language teaching and teacher training, andthe second to the design and development of more pragmatics-focusedmaterials.

In regard to language teaching, Kasper & Rose (2001: 8) present evi-dence that ‘instructional intervention may be facilitative to, even neces-sary for, the acquisition of L2 pragmatic ability’. Bardovi-Harlig et al.(1991) and Kasper (1997), observe that pragmatic awareness in the lan-guage classroom can be facilitated by the use of data collection anddescription, as such data provide the teachers with authentic materialsfor observation, discussion and classroom practice. Kasper (1997: 9) alsoargues that ‘it is vital that teaching materials on L2 pragmatics are re-search-based’ thus emphasising that insights from empirical research canfacilitate understanding of the linguistic devices available in differentsocial situations. Kasper (1997: 9) explains that such activities may allowlearners to develop their sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic compe-tence by helping them to ‘make connections between linguistic forms,pragmatic functions, their occurrence in different social contexts, andtheir cultural meanings’.

As far as teaching materials are concerned, the significance of pres-enting learners with more pragmatics-focused, culture-oriented materialsis evident. Textbooks often lack a sufficient emphasis on the pragmaticaspect of language (Bardovi-Harlig et al. 1991; Bardovi-Harlig 1992,1996) and EFL/ESL curricula and tests often emphasise structure ratherthan pragmatics. As a result, even advanced language learners ‘show amarked imbalance between their grammatical and their pragmaticknowledge’ (Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei 1998: 234). Equally, accordingto Crandall & Basturkmen (2004), the conventional approach seen inmany EAP textbooks is problematic as most textbooks typically presentlearners with ‘explicit realisations of speech acts rather than subtle andindirect ones’ (2004: 39).

5. Conclusion

The present study compared the pragmalinguistic knowledge of speechact use of advanced ESL learners and British English native speakers ina status unequal situation and identified significant differences in in-ternal and external modification patterns and in the formulation of per-spective in request production. Learners were observed to overuse zeromarking in internally modifiying their requests and underuse lexical po-liteness markers, consultative devices and cajolers as compared to thenative speaker group. In external modification, learners used signifi-cantly fewer imposition minimisers and apologies but were observed tooveruse preparators. While both groups employed the grounder as the


most frequent external modification device, there were qualitative differ-ences observed in the more detailed nature of these devices provided bythe learners. Native speakers were observed to use orientation movesinterpersonally to signal shared knowledge, indicate common groundand to focus the topic of the request. The two groups also differed signif-icantly in the native speakers’ more frequent use of impersonal perspec-tive, which they combined with a range of internal mitigation devices,and elided and formulaic constructions. Taken together, it is hoped thatthe findings from this study will contribute to the growing body of em-pirical data which highlight those areas of ILP where even advancedlearners may benefit from pedagogical intervention and development.

University of Bristol & University of Nicosia

Notes1. The distinction between native speakers and non-native speakers is not a clear-cut

one and as such it has come under discussion (see for examples Davies 1991, 2003).For the purposes of the present study, the criterion used for defining our nativespeakers is ‘childhood exposure’ (i.e. native speaker by birth), rather than longresidence in the adopted country, education in the target language medium or bybeing native speaker-like by being an exceptional learner (Davies 2003). The dis-tinction between NSs and NNS/learners adopted here follows the distinction madein a number of other recent pragmatic studies (e.g. Cohen & Shively 2007; Geluy-kens 2008; Hassall 2001, 2003; Schauer 2004, 2007).

2. The term ‘British English native speaker’ can be a controversial one as Britain isenriched by a vibrant multiculturalism while there is a multitude of ‘new’ and post-colonial Englishes spoken throughout the world. Yet this term is employed in ourstudy in order to distinguish between speakers of American, Australian and othervarieties of English whose pragmatic performance has been found to vary. The useof the term ‘native speakers of British English’ has been common practice in anumber of other cross-cultural pragmatics studies (e.g. in the CCSARP project byBlum-Kulka, House & Kasper 1989; Blum-Kulka 1982; Fukushima 2000; House &Kasper 1981, 1987; Kasper 2006; Stewart 2005; Trosborg 1995, etc.) and this prac-tice has been followed here.

3. We also use the term ‘politeness marker’ throughout this study to refer to a formof lexical modification following extensive use of the term in the interlanguagepragmatics literature (Bardovi-Harlig 1999; Schauer 2006; Hendriks 2008; Barron2008). However, we also acknowledge the limitations of this usage given the exten-sive discussions of the discursive approach to politeness (Watts 2005: xv; Mills2003) which emphasise the role of the hearer in evaluating the politeness of an ut-terance.

4. Understaters such as ‘a bit’, ‘a little’, ‘sort of’, ‘a kind of’ can be defined as ‘adver-bial modifiers by means of which the speaker underrepresents the state of affairsdenoted in the proposition’ (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989: 283).

5. Examples from Schauer (2004: 263).6. Downtoners such as ‘possibly’, ‘perhaps’, ‘just’, ‘rather’, ‘maybe’ can be defined as

‘modifiers which are used by a speaker in order to modulate the impact his or herrequest is likely to have on the hearer’ (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989: 284).


7. IELTS stands for ‘International English Language Testing System’ offered by theBritish Council. It is an internationally-recognised system for testing English lan-guage skills in listening, reading, writing and speaking, and it is designed to assessthe language ability of candidates who need to study or work where English is usedas the language of communication. IELTS is accepted for entry to every universityin the UK.

References

Achiba, Machiko. 2003. Learning to request in a second language: Child interlanguagepragmatics. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Andersen, Roger W. & Yasuhiro Shirai. 1996. The primacy of aspect in first and sec-ond language acquisition: The pidgin�creole connection. In William C. Ritchie &Tej K. Bhatia (eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition, 527�570. SanDiego, CA: Academic Press.

Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen. 1992. Pragmatics as part of teacher education. TESOLJournal 1. 28�32.

Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen. 1996. Pragmatics and language teaching: Bringing prag-matics and pedagogy together. In Lawrence Bouton (ed.), Pragmatics and lan-guage, 21�39. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Divisionof English as an International Language.

Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen. 1999. Exploring the interlanguage of interlanguage prag-matics: A research agenda for acquisitional pragmatics. Language Learning 49.677�713.

Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen. 2001. Evaluating the empirical evidence. Grounds for in-struction in pragmatics? In Kenneth Rose & Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmaticsin language teaching, 13�32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen & Zoltan Dörnyei. 1998. Do pragmatic learners recognizepragmatic violations? Pragmatic versus grammatical awareness in instructed L2learning. TESOL Quarterly 32. 233�259.

Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen, Cesar Felix-Brasdefer & Alwiya S. Omar (eds.). 2006. Prag-matics and language learning, Volume 11. Manoa, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.

Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen, Beverly Hartford, Rebecca Mahan-Taylor, Mary J. Mor-gan & Dudley W. Reynolds. 1991. Developing pragmatic awareness: Closing theconversation. ELT Journal 45. 4�15.

Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen & Beverly Hartford. 1993. Learning the rules of academictalk: A longitudinal study of pragmatic development. Studies in Second LanguageAcquisition 15. 279�304.

Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen & Beverly Hartford. 2005a. Institutional discourse and in-terlanguage pragmatic research. In Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig & Beverly Hartford(eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics: Exploring institutional talk, 7�36. London: Law-rence Erlbaum.

Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen & Beverly Hartford (eds.). 2005b. Interlanguage pragmatics:Exploring institutional talk. London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 7�36.

Barron, Anne. 2003. Acquisition in interlanguage pragmatics. Learning how to do thingswith words in a study abroad context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Barron, Anne. 2006. Requesting in Irish English and English English: A study of intra-lingual regional pragmatic variation. Paper presented at the 31st InternationalLAUD Symposium. Intercultural Pragmatics, Linguistics, Social and CognitiveApproaches. Landau/Pfalz, Germany.


Barron, Anne. 2008. Contrastive requests in inner circle englishes: A study in varia-tional pragmatics. In Martin Pütz & JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer (eds.), Developingcontrastive pragmatics: Interlanguage and cross-cultural perspectives, 355�402.Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Bataineh, Ruba & Ruba Fahmi Bataineh. 2006. Apology strategies of Jordanian EFLuniversity students. Journal of Pragmatics 38. 1901�1927.

Beebe, Leslie, Tomoko Takahashi & Robin Uliss-Weltz. 1990. Pragmatic transfer inESL refusals. In Robin C. Scarcella, Elaine S. Anderson & Stephen D. Krashen(eds.), Developing communicative competence in a second language, 55�73. NewYork: Newbury House.

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 1982. Learning to say what you mean in a second language:A study of the speech act performance of learners of Hebrew as a second language.Applied Linguistics 3. 29�59.

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 1985. Modifiers as indicating devices: The case of requests.Theoretical Linguistics 12(2/3). 213�229.

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 1989. Playing it safe: The role of conventionality in indirect-ness. In Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Gabriele Kasper & Juliane House (eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies, 37�70. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex,

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 1991. Interlanguage pragmatics: The case of requests. In Rob-ert Phillipson, Eric Kellerman, Larry Selinker, Michael Sharwood Smith & MerrillSwain (eds.), Foreign/Second language pedagogy research: A commemorative vol-ume for Claus Faerch, 255�272. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House & Gabriele Kasper (eds.). 1989. Cross-culturalpragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, N. J. Ablex.

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana & Edward A. Levenston. 1987. Lexical-grammatical prag-matic indicators. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 9(2). 155�170.

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana & Elite Olshtain. 1984. Requests and apologies: A cross cul-tural study of speech act realization patterns. Applied Linguistics 5. 196�213.

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana & Elite Olshtain. 1986. Too many words: Length of utteranceand pragmatic failure. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 8. 165�179.

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House & Gabriele Kasper (eds.). 1989. Cross-culturalpragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Billmyer, Kristine & Manka Varghese. 2000. Investigating instrument-based pragmaticvariability: Effects of enhancing discourse completion tests. Applied Linguistics 21.517�552.

Brown, James D. 2001. Pragmatics tests: Different purposes, different tests. In Ken-neth Rose & Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching, 301�326.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

Bou-Franch, Patricia & Nuria Lorenzo-Dus. 2005. Enough DCTs: Moving methodo-logical debate in pragmatics into the 21st century. Paper presented at the 16th

International Conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning, Indiana Univer-sity, Bloomington.

Bouton, Lawrence. 1996a. Pragmatics and language learning. In Bouton, Larry (ed.),Pragmatics and language learning, 1�20. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois at Ur-bana-Champaign: Division of English as an International Language

Bouton, Lawrence (ed.). 1996b. Pragmatics and language. Urbana, Ill: University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign: Division of English as an International Language.

Bouton, Lawrence & Yamuna Kachru (eds.), Pragmatics and language learning mono-graph series Vol. 3. Urbana-Champaign: Division of English as an internationallanguage, University of Illinois, Urbana-Campaign.

Boxer, Diana & Andrew D. Cohen (eds.). 2004. Studying speaking to inform secondlanguage learning. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.


Brown, Penelope & Stephen Levinson. 1978. Universals in language usage: Politenessphenomena. In Esther Goody (ed.), Questions and Politeness, 56�289. Cambridge,U.K: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, Penelope & Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in languageusage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Carter, Ronald & Michael McCarthy. 1995. Spoken grammar: What is it and how canwe teach it? English Language Teaching Journal 49. 207�218.

Carter, Ronald & Michael McCarthy. 1997. Exploring spoken English. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Churchill, Eton & Margaret A. DuFon. 2006. Evolving threads in study abroad re-search. In Margaret A. DuFon & Eton Churchill (eds.), Language learners in studyabroad context, 1�27. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Clark, Herbert. 1979. Responding to indirect speech acts. Cognitive Psychology 11.430�477.

Cook, Vivian. 1993. Linguistics and second language acquisition. London: Macmillan.Cohen, Andrew, D. 2004. Assessing speech acts in a second language. In Diana

Boxer & Andrew D. Cohen (eds.), Studying speaking to inform second languagelearning, 302�327. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Cohen, Andrew, D. 2007. Teaching and assessing L2 pragmatics: What can we expectfrom learners? Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguis-tics CA, April 2007.

Cohen, Andrew, D. & Rachel Shively. 2007. Acquisition of requests and apologies inSpanish and French: Impact of study abroad and strategy-building intervention.The Modern Language Journal 91(ii). 189�212.

Crandall, Elizabeth & Helen Basturkmen. 2004. Evaluating pragmatics-focused mate-rials. English Language Teaching Journal 58. 38�49.

Dalmau, Maria S. & Hortensia Curell i Gotor. 2007. From ‘Sorry very much’ to ‘I’mever so sorry’: Acquisitional patterns in L2 apologies by Catalan learners of Eng-lish. Intercultural Pragmatics 4. 287�315.

Davies, Alan. 1991. The native speaker in applied linguistics. Edinburgh: EdinburghUniversity Press.

Davies, Alan. 2003. The native speaker: Myth and reality Clevedon: MultilingualMatters.

DuFon, Margaret A. & Eton Churchill (eds.). 2006. Language learners in study abroadcontext. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria. 2003. Requesting strategies and cross-cultural prag-matics: Greek and English. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Notting-ham, Nottingham, UK.

Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria. 2004. Requestive directness in intercultural communi-cation: Greek and English. In Leigh James & Eric Loo (eds.), Outer limits: Areader in communication and behaviour across cultures, 25�48. Melbourne: Lan-guage Australia.

Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria. 2005. ‘Yes, tell me please, what time is the middayflight from Athens arriving?’: Telephone service encounters and politeness. Inter-cultural Pragmatics 2. 253�273.

Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria. 2008. Internal and external mitigation in interlan-guage request production: The case of Greek learners of English. Journal of Polite-ness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture 4(1). 111�138.

Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria. 2009. Interlanguage request modification: the use oflexical/phrasal downgraders and mitigating supportive moves. Multilingua 28(1).79�112.


Edmondson, Willis. 1981. Spoken discourse: A model for analysis. London: Longman.Edmondson, Willis & Juliane House. 1991. Do learners talk too much? The waffle

phenomenon in interlanguage pragmatics. In Phillipson, Robert, Eric Kellerman,Larry Selinker, Michael Sharwood Smith & Merrill Swain (eds.), Foreign/Secondlanguage pedagogy research: A commemorative volume for Claus Faerch, 273�286.Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

Eisenstein, Muriel & Jean Bodman. 1993. Expressing gratitude in American English.In Gabriele Kasper & Shoshana Blum-Kulka (eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics,64�81. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ellis, Rod. 1992. Learning to communicate in the classroom: A study of two languagelearners’ requests. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 14. 1�23.

Ellis, Rod. 1997a. Learning to communicate in the classroom. In Rod Ellis (ed.), SLAresearch and language teaching, 173�195. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ellis, Rod (ed.). 1997b. SLA research and language teaching. Oxford: Oxford Univer-sity Press.

Faerch, Claus & Gabriele Kasper. 1989. Internal and external modification in interlan-guage request realization. In Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Julianne House & GabrieleKasper (eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies, 221�247. Nor-wood, NJ: Ablex.

Felix-Brasdefer, J. Cesar. 2007. Pragmatic development in the Spanish as a FL class-room. Intercultural Pragmatics 4(2). 253�286.

Felix-Brasdefer, J. Cesar. 2008a. Politeness in Mexico and the United States: A con-trastive study of the realization and perception of refusals. Amsterdam/Phildadel-phia: John Benjamins.

Felix-Brasdefer, J. Cesar. 2008b. Perceptions of refusals to invitations: Exploring theminds of foreign language learners. Language Awareness 17(3). 195�211.

Foster-Cohen, Susan, Michael Sharwood Smith, Antonella Sorace & Ota Mitsuhiko(eds.). 2004. EUROSLA Yearbook, Volume 4, 253�273. Amsterdam: John Benja-mins.

Freed, Barbara F. (ed.). 1995. Second language acquisition in a study abroad context.Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Fukushima, Saeko. 1990. Offers and requests: Performance by Japanese learners ofEnglish. World Englishes 9. 317�325.

Fukushima, Saeko. 2000. Requests and Culture: Politeness in British English and Japa-nese. Bern: Peter Lang.

Gass, Susan, Carolyn Madden, Dennis Preston & Larry Selinker (eds.). , Variation insecond language acquisition, Volume 1. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Geluykens, Ronald. 2008. Requesting in native and non-native business letters. InGeluykens, Ronald & Bettina Kraft (eds.), Institutional discourse in cross-culturalcontexts, 169�192. Munich: Lincom Studies in Pragmatics.

Golato, Andrea. 2003. Studying complement responses: A comparison of DCTs andrecordings of naturally occurring talk. Applied Linguistics 24. 90�121.

Hartford, Beverly & Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig. 1992. Experimental and observationaldata in the study of interlanguage pragmatics. In Lawrence Bouton & YamunaKachru (eds.), Pragmatics and language learning monograph series Vol. 3, 33�52.Urbana-Champaign: Division of English as an international language, Universityof Illinois, Urbana-Campaign.

Hassall, Tim. 2001. Modifying requests in a second language. International Review ofApplied Linguistics in Language Teaching (IRAL) 39. 259�283.

Hassall, Tim. 2003. Requests by Australian learners of Indonesian. Journal of Prag-matics 35. 1903�1928.


Hassall, Tim. 2006. Learning to take leave in social conversations: A diary study. InMargaret A. DuFon & Eton Churchill (eds.), Language learners in study abroadcontexts, 31�58.Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Hendriks, Berna. 2008. Dutch English requests: A study of request performance byDutch learners of English. In Martin Pütz & JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer (eds.),Developing contrastive pragmatics: Interlanguage and cross-cultural perspectives,335�354. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter,

Hickey, Leo & Miranda Stewart (eds.). 2005. Politeness in Europe, 116�129. Clevedon:Multilingua Matters.

Hill, Thomas. 1997. The development of pragmatic competence in an EFL context.Phd dissertation, Tokyo: Temple University, Japan.

Hoffman-Hicks, Sheila D. 2000. The longitudinal development of French foreign lan-guage pragmatic competence: Evidence from study abroad. PhD dissertation, In-diana University, 1999. Dissertation Abstracts International �A 61 (2): 591.

House, Juliane & Gabriele Kasper. 1981. Politeness markers in English and German.In Florian Coulmas (ed.), Conversational routine: Explorations in standardizedcommunication situations and prepatterned speech, 157�185. The Hague: MoutonPublishers.

House, Juliane & Gabriele Kasper. 1987. Interlanguage pragmatics: Requesting in aforeign language. In W. Lörscher & R. Schulze (eds.), Perspectives on language inperformance. Festschrift for Werner Hüllen on the occasion of his 60th birthday,1250�1288. Tübingen: Narr.

Ide Sachiko. 1989. Formal forms and discernment: Two neglected aspects of universalsof linguistic politeness. Multilingua 8(2/3). 223�248.

Kasper, Gabriele. 1989. Variation in interlanguage speech act realization. In SusanGass, Carolyn Madden, Dennis Preston & Larry Selinker (eds.), Variation in sec-ond language acquisition, Volume 1, 37�58. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Kasper, Gabriele. 1997. Can pragmatic competence be taught? (NetWork #6) [HTMLdocument]. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, Second Language Teaching andCurriculum Center. Retrieved [13/09/2006] from the World Wide Web: http://www.nflrc.hawaii.edu/NetWorks/NW06/

Kasper, Gabriele. 2006a. Speech acts in interaction: towards discursive pragmatics. InKathleen Bardovi-Harlig, Cesar Felix-Brasdefer & Alwiya S.Omar (eds.), Prag-matics and language learning, Volume 11, 281�314. Manoa, HI: University ofHawai’i Press.

Kasper, Gabriele. 2006b. Pragmatic comperehension in learner�native speaker dis-course. Language Learning 34(4). 1�20.

Kasper, Gabriele. 2008. Data collection in pragmatics research. In Spencer-Oatey,Helen (ed.), Culturally speaking: Culture, communication and politeness theory,316�341. London: Continuum.

Kasper, Gabriele & Shoshana Blum-Kulka (eds.). 1993. Interlanguage pragmatics. Ox-ford: Oxford University Press.

Kasper, Gabriele & Kenneth Rose. 1999. Pragmatics and SLA. Annual Review of Ap-plied Linguistics 19. 81�104.

Kasper, Gabriele & Kenneth Rose. 2001. Pragmatics in language teaching. In Rose,Kenneth & Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching, 1�9. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kasper, Gabriele & Kenneth Rose. 2002. Pragmatic development in a second language.Oxford: Blackwell.

Kobayashi, Hiroe & Carol Rinnert. 2003. Coping with high imposition requests: Highvs. low proficiency EFL students in Japan. In Martinez Flor, Juan Uso & Fernan-dez Guerra (eds.), Pragmatic competence and foreign language teaching, 161�184.Castello: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume 1.


Lee, Cynthia. 2005. A cross-linguistic study on the linguistic expressions of Cantoneseand English requests. Pragmatics 15. 395�422.

Locher, Miriam. 2004. Power and politeness in action. Disagreements in oral communi-cation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Lörscher, W. & R. Schulze (eds.). 1987. Perspectives on language in performance. Fest-schrift for Werner Hüllen on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Tübingen: Narr.

Makri-Tsilipakou, Marianthi. 2001. Congratulations and bravo! In Arin Bayraktaro-glu & Maria Sifianou (eds.), Linguistic politeness across boundaries: The case ofGreek and Turkish, 137�178. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Matsumoto, Yoshiko. 1989. Politeness and conversational universals: Observationsfrom Japanese. Multilingua 8(2/3). 207�221.

Matsumura, Shoichi. 2001. Learning the rules for offering advice: A quantitative ap-proach to second language socialization. Language Learning 51(4). 635�679.

Mey, Jacob. 2004. Between culture and pragmatics: Scylla and Charybdis? The precari-ous condition of intercultural pragmatics. Intercultural Pragmatics 1. 27�48.

Mills, Sara. 2003. Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Otcu, Bahar & Deniz Zeyrek. 2006. Requesting in L2: Pragmatic development of Tur-

kish learners of English. Paper presented at the 31st Intercultural PragmaticsLAUD Symposium. Intercultural Pragmatics: Linguistic, Social and CognitiveApproaches. Landau/Pfalz, Germany.

Pavlidou, Theodossia. 1994. Contrasting German�Greek politeness and the conse-quences. Journal of Pragmatics 21. 487�511.

Pavlidou, Theodossia. 1997. The last five turns: Preliminary remarks on closings inGreek and German telephone calls. International Journal of the Sociology of Lan-guage 126. 145�162.

Pavlidou, Theodossia. 1998. Greek and German telephone closings: Patterns of con-firmation and agreement. Pragmatics 8. 79�94.

Pellegrino, Valerie Aveni. 2005. Study abroad and second language use: Constructingthe self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Phillipson, Robert, Eric Kellerman, Larry Selinker, Michael Sharwood Smith & Mer-rill Swain (eds.). 1991. Foreign/Second language pedagogy research: A commemora-tive volume for Claus Faerch. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Placencia, Maria Elena. 1992. Politeness and mediated telephone conversations inEcuadorian Spanish and British English. Language Learning Journal 6. 80�82.

Regan, Vera. 1995. The acquisition of sociolinguistic native speech norms. In BarbaraF. Freed (ed.), Second language acquisition in a study abroad context, 245�267.Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Rintell, Ellen, M. & Candace J. Mitchell. 1989. Studies of requests and apologies: Aninquiry into method. In Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House & Gabriele Kasper(eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and Apologies, 248�272. Norwood,NJ: Ablex.

Ritchie, William C. & Tej K. Bhatia (eds.). 2004. Handbook of second language acquisi-tion. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Rose, Kenneth. 1992. Speech acts and questionnaires: The effect of hearer response.Journal of Pragmatics 17. 49�62.

Rose, Kenneth. 2000. An exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmaticdevelopment. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 22. 27�67.

Rose, Kenneth & Gabriele Kasper (eds.). 2001. Pragmatics in language teaching. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sasaki, Miyuki. 1998. Investigating EFL students’ production of speech acts: A com-parison of production questionnaires and role plays. Journal of Pragmatics 30.457�484.


Scarcella, Robin & J. Brunak. 1981. On speaking politely in a second language. In-ternational Journal of the Sociology of Language 27. 59�75.

Scarcella, Robin C., Elaine S. Anderson & Stephen D. Krashen (eds.). 1990. Develop-ing communicative competence in a second language. New York: Newbury House.

Schauer, Gila A. 2004. May you speak louder maybe? Interlanguage pragmatic devel-opment in requests. In Susan Foster-Cohen, Michael Sharwood Smith, AntonellaSorace & Ota Mitsuhiko (eds.), EUROSLA Yearbook, Volume 4, 253�273. Am-sterdam: John Benjamins.

Schauer, Gila A. 2006. The development of ESL learners’ pragmatic competence: Alongitudinal investigation of awareness and production. In Bardovi-Harlig, Kath-leen, Cesar Felix-Brasdefer & Alwiya S. Omar (eds.), Pragmatics and languagelearning volume 11. Manoa, HI: Second Language teaching and Curriculum CenterUniversity of Hawaii. University of Hawaii Press, 135�163.

Schauer, Gila A. 2007. Finding the right words in the study abroad context: Thedevelopment of German learners’ use of external modifiers in English. Intercul-tural Pragmatics 4. 193�220.

Schmidt, Richard. 1993. Consciousness, learning and interlanguage pragmatics. InGabriele Kasper & Shoshana Blum-Kulka (eds.), Interlanguage Pragmatics, 21�42. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Scollon, Ron & Suzanne Wong-Scollon. 1983. Face in interethnic communication. InRichard Janney & Richard Schmidt (eds.), Language and communication, London/New York: Longman, 156�188.

Sifianou, Maria. 1992. Politeness phenomena in England and Greece. A cross-culturalperspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Sifianou, Maria. 2001 [1989]. On the telephone again! Differences in telephone behav-ior. In Alexandra Georgakopoulou & Marianna Spanaki (eds.), A reader in Greeksociolinguistics: Studies in modern Greek language, culture and communication,137�159. Bern: Peter Lang. First published in 1989 in Language in Society 18.527�544.

Spencer-Oatey, Helen (ed.). 2008. Culturally speaking: Managing rapport through talkacross cultures. 2nd edition. London: Continuum.

Stewart, Miranda. 2005. Politeness in Britain. In Leo Hickey & Miranda Stewart(eds.), Politeness in Europe, 116�129. Clevedon: Multilingua Matters.

Storch, Neomy. 1998. A classroom-based study: Insights from a collaborative textreconstruction task. ELT Journal 52(4). 291�300.

Takahashi, Satomi. 1992. Transferability of indirect request strategies. University ofHawai’i. Working Papers in ESL 11. 69�124.

Takahashi, Satomi & Leslie Beebe. 1987. The development of pragmatic competenceby Japanese learners of English. Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT)Journal 8. 131�155.

Thomas, Jenny. 1983. Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics 4(2). 91�112.

Thomas, Margaret. 1994. Assessment of L2 proficiency in second language acquisitionresearch. Language Learning 44. 307�336.

Trosborg, Anna. 1995. Interlanguage pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Van Mulken, Margot. 1996. Politeness markers in French and Dutch requests. Lan-

guage Sciences 8(3/4). 689�702.Watts, Richard, Sachiko Ide & Konrad Ehlich (eds.). 2005 [1992]. Politeness in lan-

guage: Studies in its history, theory and practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Watts, Richard. 2005. Linguistic politeness research: quo vadis? In Richard Watts,

Sachiko Ide & Konrad Ehlich (eds.), Politeness in language: Studies in its history,theory and practice, xi�x1vii. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.


Watts, Richard. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Wierzbicka, Anna. 2003 [1991]. Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human in-

teraction. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Woodfield, Helen. 2004. Requests in English: A study of ESL and native speakers’

responses to written discourse completion tasks. Unpublished Phd dissertation.University of Bristol, UK.

Woodfield, Helen. 2005. Problematizing discourse completion tasks: Voices from ver-bal report. Paper presented at the 14th World Congress of Applied Linguistics(AILA), Madison, Wisconsin, USA.

Woodfield, Helen. 2006. Requests in English: ESL learners’ responses to written dis-course completion tasks. Paper presented at the 31st International LAUD Sympo-sium. Intercultural Pragmatics, Linguistics, Social and Cognitive Approaches.Landau/Pfalz, Germany.

Woodfield, Helen. 2007. Interlanguage requests in English: Some evidence from anempirical study. Paper presented at the Annual Conference for the American Asso-ciation for Applied Linguistics, Costa Mesa, CA, April 21�24.

Woodfield, Helen. 2008a. Interlanguage requests in English: A contrastive study. InMartin Pütz & JoAnne Neff Van Aertselaer (eds.), Contrastive pragmatics: Inter-language and cross-cultural perspectives, 231�264. Berlin/New York: Mouton DeGruyter.

Woodfield, Helen. 2008b. Problematizing discourse completion tasks: Voices from ver-bal report. Evaluation & Research in Education 21. 43�69.

Helen Woodfield is a Senior Lecturer in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at the Uni-versity of Bristol. Her research interests are in interlanguage pragmatics, pragmaticdevelopment and cross-cultural communication. Recent publications include ‘Prob-lematising discourse completion tasks: Voices from verbal report’ (in Evaluation andresearch in education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2008) and ‘Interlanguage re-quests: A contrastive study’ (in Developing contrastive pragmatics: Interlanguage andcross cultural perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008).Address for correspondence: University of Bristol Graduate School of Education35 Berkeley Square, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1JA.e-mail: [email protected]

Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis is Assistant Professor of English and Applied Lingui-tics at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. She holds a doctorate in cross-cultural prag-matics from the School of English Studies of the University of Nottingham, UK.Her research areas are cross-cultural communication, interlanguage and interculturalpragmatics, sociopragmatics, pragmalinguistics and politeness. Her publications haveappeared in Intercultural Pragmatics, Journal of Politeness Research and Multilingua.Her current research focuses on the pragmatic performance of Greek and Greek Cyp-riot learners of English.Address for correspondence: Department of Languages and Literature, School of Hu-manities, Social Sciences and Law, University of Nicosia, 46 Makedonitissas Avenue,Nicosia 1700, Cyprus.e-mail: [email protected]

Documents

(2010) NS & NNS Students' Requests to Faculty for an Extension