Part of
Interlanguage Request ModificationEdited by Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis and Helen Woodfield
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 217] 2012
► pp. 119–162
Edited by Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis and Helen Woodfield
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 217] 2012
► pp. 119–162
Interlanguage requests in institutional e-mail discourse
A study in Hong Kong
This paper reports on a study in Hong Kong that investigates the pragmalinguistic choices and sociopragmatic judgements of 15 American-English-speaking students (NS) and 15 Chinese learners of English (CLE) in making e-mail requests to their professors. The study found that all students tended to be indirect in making such requests. Despite the fairly strong pragmalinguistic control developed by the CLEs in realising specific indirect strategies, they were particularly weak in employing certain syntactic devices as downgraders; to compensate, they made excessive use of lexical/phrasal and external mitigating moves to soften the requestive force. The CLEs were less confident in their judgements of language appropriateness and they perceived such requests as more imposing than their NS counterparts. Implications for methodology and pedagogy are highlighted. Keywords: request modification; academic e-mails; perception
Cited by (21)
Cited by 21 other publications
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Sun, Yuqing
2024. Analysis of external modification devices and framing moves in request emails. Applied Pragmatics 6:1 ► pp. 86 ff.
Jang, JooYoung & Bo Feng
2023. The Effect of Anticipatory Apology and Appreciation in Online Support-Seeking Messages on Support Provision in the U.S. and Korea. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 42:3 ► pp. 275 ff.
Haider, Iftikhar & Hamed Zandi
2022. In my professor’s eyes: Faculty and perceived impoliteness in student emails. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 18:1 ► pp. 197 ff.
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2022. Second Language Pragmatics,
Sládková, Věra & Marie Lahodová Vališová
2022. Request strategies and modification devices as performed by Czech EFL learners: A focus on borrowing objects. Discourse and Interaction 15:2 ► pp. 128 ff.
Bella, Spyridoula
2021. Chapter 8. In search of the missing grade. In Email Pragmatics and Second Language Learners [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 328], ► pp. 203 ff.
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2021. Non-native EFL teachers’ email productionand perceptions of e-(im)politeness. Journal of Politeness Research 17:2 ► pp. 155 ff.
Hopkinson, Christopher
2021. Realizations of oppositional speech acts in English: a contrastive analysis of discourse in L1 and L2 settings. Intercultural Pragmatics 18:2 ► pp. 163 ff.
Usó-Juan, Esther
2021. Chapter 3. Long-term instructional effects on learners’ use of email request modifiers. In Email Pragmatics and Second Language Learners [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 328], ► pp. 71 ff.
Dombi, Judit
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2020. Exploring L2 learners’ request behavior in a multi-turn conversation with a fully automated agent. Intercultural Pragmatics 17:2 ► pp. 221 ff.
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2020. Children’s Requestive Behavior in L2 Greek: Beyond the Core Request. Corpus Pragmatics 4:3 ► pp. 359 ff.
Deng, Jun & Leila Ranta
2019. Improving Chinese EFL Teachers’ English Requests: Does Study Abroad Help?. The Canadian Modern Language Review 75:2 ► pp. 145 ff.
González-Lloret, Marta
2019. Technology and L2 Pragmatics Learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 39 ► pp. 113 ff.
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2017. Pragmatic Development During Study Abroad: An Analysis of Spanish Teenagers’ Request Strategies in English Emails. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 37 ► pp. 77 ff.
Ali, Ziyad & Helen Woodfield
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Chang, Miao-Hsia, Jean Curran, Yueh-Kuei Hsu & Chih-Chun Hsu
2016. Do Chinese Students Waffle in Their Apologies?: An Exploration into EFL Learners’ Emails. In Email Discourse Among Chinese Using English as a Lingua Franca, ► pp. 61 ff.
Liu, Jianda & Wei Ren
2016. Apologies in Emails: Interactions Between Chinese EFL Learners and Their Foreign Peers. In Email Discourse Among Chinese Using English as a Lingua Franca, ► pp. 205 ff.
Hallajian, Ali & Maya Khemlani David
2014. “Hello and Good Day to you Dear Dr. …” Greetings and Closings in Supervisors-supervisees Email Exchanges. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 118 ► pp. 85 ff.
[no author supplied]
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