A Pragmatic Analysis Of Request Speech Act In English Email Texts Of International Corporations Of China

Most studies on request speech act have been done by foreign researches. The languages that involved by foreigners are English and other languages in Western countries. Some of researchers discussed request speech act in Japanese and Korean in Asia but their studies were heavily influenced by Western cultures. It is Chinese scholars that pay more attentions to analyze Chinese request speech act or give contrastive studies on request speech act between Chinese and English according to the request classification set by CCSARP. The analysis of request in email discourse has focused on making request from students and professors perspective, while employing English request speech act from the perspective of Chinese staff is given little attentions. It is necessary to discuss Chinese staff's request speech act in international environment, for the language they used is influenced by Chinese cultures and values and it has its own unique characteristics.This thesis, focusing on Chinese staff's request speech act in English email texts from the perspective of pragmatics, aims to analyze the choices of request forms, the request strategies, the related social variables like power, social distance and the degree of imposition as well as request modifications. The implications of this thesis aim to arouse the importance of developing both linguistic and pragmatic knowledge for students in their studies.In order to analyze English request speech act of Chinese staff, the data collected consist of 182 request emails in 475 different types of English emails during the process of business communication from three international corporations of China. After classification of these emails, it is found that there are 182 request emails in total with 80 direct request emails, 91 conventionally indirect request emails, and 11 non-conventionally indirect request emails respectively. The findings are as follows: (1) Chinese staff have the same preference as native speakers to choose imperatives when making request in emails. The proportion of declaratives or the proportion of imperatives is comparatively lower but Chinese staff do not avoid these two forms in making request.(2) The statistics shows that it is the conventionally indirect strategies that have high proportion in 182 English email texts, and then the direct and non-conventionally strategies. It means that staff intend to email request in a polite way.There are two points that differ from any other researches which using oral or writing discourse. One is that the percentage of performatives is 0 in 80 English direct request email texts. Staff prefer to use hedged performatives rather than employ performatives barely. The other is that Chinese staff usually use strong hints rather than mild hints to realize their request illocutionary force.(3) According to this thesis, the social variables like power, social distance and the degree of imposition do have influence on request speech act in English email texts.(4) There are some internal modifications in 140 English request emails like interrogative, interrogative + please and so on. Meanwhile, the statistics shows that Chinese staff do prefer to employ the supportive moves before the Head Act, i.e. the pre-modifications. The tendency of choosing pre-modification or post-modification is different from English native speakers.