Resources for Requests in English

Cook, Misty & Liddicoat, Anthony. (2002). The development of comprehension in interlanguage pragmatics: The case of request strategies in English. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics. 25. 10.1075/aral.25.1.02coo. 

We can see that there are three main forms of requests in English. These forms are direct requests, conventional indirect requests, and unconventional indirect requests, which all vary in their directness of stating illocutionary force. 

Direct requests are the most straightforward form, as the illocutionary force is stated through lexicon, grammar, and semantics. These may be “want” statements or imperatives and performatives. These are usually marked with “please”. Conventional indirect requests do not state the illocutionary force as directly. These are usually structured as “could you + VP” or “can you + VP”, in which the speaker asks about the ability of the person being asked the request. A nonconventional indirect request is more of a reference to the person being asked and their involvement in what the speaker wants to request. This form mostly relies on contextual information, and the illocutionary force is very hidden.

Iragui, J. C. (1996). Requests and Apologies: A Comparison Between Native and Non-Native Speakers of English. Atlantis, 18(1/2), 53–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41054813

Iragui’s (1996) article discusses the role of pragmatic concepts, specifically, how most studies focus on the interaction between pragmatic theory and second language acquisition with attention to speech act theories and interlanguage (Iragui, 1996). This article mentions that its focus is looking at pragmatic dimensions of communicative competence. In order to do that, Iragui conducted a study where 96 university students completing a task of requesting and apologizing were analyzed (Iragui, 1996). The analyses included the roles of the participants' linguistic background, gender, interlocutors' social status, and linguistic expression used for speech acts. The author then discusses the differences between native and non-native English speakers and related it to linguistic and psychological elements (Iragui, 1996). This is what led Iragui (1996) to find that linguistic expression for pragmatic meaning tends to be specific to language and contexts even if pragmatic principles are universal

Ellis, R. (1992). LEARNING TO COMMUNICATE IN THE CLASSROOM: A Study of Two Language Learners’ Requests. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 14(1), 1–23.

Although request types share many similarities, as in they are usually initiated by the requester and can be performed in one or two turns. However, types of requests may also differ. Requests can be declarative, interrogative, or imperative. Some requests may be supported by an introduction to to request for more severe requests or in situations where the requester has less power than the requestee. Along with this, positive politeness or negative politeness may be used with requests in certain contexts.

The common three-phase interaction of initiating, responding, and giving feedback in the classroom limits the learners ability to produce these different types of requests because students are not given various real-life settings in which they would use different request types. This study mentions that the conversation setting plays a large role in which kind of requests are being made.