Abstract
Through extensive data analysis based on American and British English corpora, Requests in American and British English investigates cross-cultural differences in request realization strategies and also instrument-induced effects on these strategies. The volume consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 describes the research objectives and outlines the volume’s structure. Flöck raises three general research questions and aims to answer them from both cross-cultural and methodological dimensions.
Chapter 2 establishes the theoretical framework of the research. Flöck first points out that the paradigm of speech act theory and speech act-based politeness theory conceptualizes requests as acts reflecting the speaker’s intention, while the paradigm concerning the discursive theories of politeness and conversation analysis understands requests as instantiations of social practices. In Flöck’s view, although the two paradigms study requests from different angles, they both contribute to our understanding of requests. Flöck then explains the different instruments of data collection and their advantages and disadvantages in pragmatic research. She reviews an array of works comparing the instrument-induced effects on the production of speech acts. The structures of requests in cross-cultural pragmatic research, discourse pragmatics and conversation analytic research are presented in the following discussion, and Flöck concludes that a holistic understanding of the functions and structures of requests relies on an analysis of the interactional features of the speech acts based on naturally occurring data. Finally, the analysis of responses to requests and the definition of requests are offered.
Chapter 3 introduces the methodological foundation and data collection of the research. The structural realization of American English (AmE) is contrasted with that of British English (BrE). Also, request realization in non-elicited data is contrasted with that in elicited data. Consequently, there are four different datasets in this research. The non-elicited AmE data are sampled from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English and the non-elicited BrE data are from the British component of the International Corpus of English. Both AmE- and BrE-elicited data were collected by discourse completion tasks (DCTs) for a study by Breuer and Geluykens (2007). In each of the four datasets, 260 requests are sampled for the subsequent analysis.
The results and findings of the study are presented in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 investigates cross-cultural variation in AmE and BrE conversational requests. Request head acts are analyzed in terms of sentence types, head act strategies and level of directness. The analysis reveals small differences in the distribution of sentence types and head act strategies. The overall distribution of directness levels is also similar in both national varieties of English. As for mitigating modifiers, speakers of both varieties show a strong preference for mitigation over aggravation. However, Flöck finds that British speakers use fewer aggravators and more mitigators than their AmE counterparts, and they display a preference for indirectness and agreement in signaling compliance.
The same analytical categories are used in the instrument comparison of DCTs and non-elicited conversations in Chapter 5. Flöck reveals that the DCT requests differ strongly from conversational requests in request sentence types. DCT requests employ many more declarative sentences and show a strong preference for conventionally indirect strategies. In terms of request mitigating modification strategies, DCTs display a preference for mitigating modifiers in both their distributions and numbers. Flöck further suggests the necessity to investigate the cross-cultural similarities and differences induced by requests recorded with two different instruments. It seems that DCTs overgeneralize cross-cultural differences compared with conversational data. Chapter 5 concludes that the linguistic realization of speech acts is greatly influenced by the instrument of data collection, and the DCTs do not validly represent the request patterns found in naturally occurring conversation. The final chapter of this volume presents a summary of the central findings, followed by the theoretical and methodological implications and finally some future research suggestions.
This volume answers the question of whether and how the instrument of data collection influences the realization of requests under study. It not only discusses the structural differences in request realization across two varieties of English, but also contrasts the differences in request realization across two instruments of data collection. It opens the possibility to widen our horizon of looking at speech acts from two contrastive dimensions, which gives us a wide range of theoretical and practical implications for pragmatic studies. First, it shows that strategic aggravating language, such as face-threatening language, not only occurs in speech acts that are perceived to be impolite, but also is used as strategic means in different kinds of verbal behaviors, for instance complaining, requesting or reprimanding. Flöck advocates focusing more on aspects of aggravation and impoliteness, which would give us a thorough and holistic understanding of speech acts. Second, by comparing DCT and naturally occurring requests, Flöck reveals that DCT, as the most widely used and accepted data collection tool, cannot represent language use reliably and needs to be replaced by observational methods of data collection. Third, to replace the DCT method in pragmatic research studies, Flöck gives us some valuable ideas concerning the collection of naturally occurring data or the development of large-scale corpora suitable for the analysis of different pragmatic phenomena. Last but not least, advocating the combination of a qualitative and quantitative analysis of data is another factor that makes this volume a worthwhile read. With the application of a mixed-method design, a new dimension of exploring requests makes the volume an innovative contribution to the field of cross-cultural pragmatics.
Requests in American and British English is a fascinating study on requests from cross-cultural and methodological perspectives. It gives a wider, more general perspective on requests, and it is a model of advocating naturally occurring data in pragmatic studies. Considering its far-reaching implications for different research studies, the volume is highly recommended to scholars of pragmatics and those interested in language politeness, variational pragmatics and research methodologies.