Request Speech Act In A Cognitive Perspective

This thesis attempts to analyze the structures and strategies employed in request speech act, on the basis of Panther & Thornburg's (1997/1998) speech act scenario and Mendoza & Hernandez's (2002) semantic description of request speech act. Traditional analyses concerning structural components of requests tend to be superficial and fail to grasp the deep structures underlying superficial phenomena. For instance, according to Song Mei, Lee-Wong's (2000) study, requests generally take the following form: (internal modification) + (external modification) + core request + (internal modification) + (external modification). Core request and external modification are not distinctly defined and therefore appear to be unorderly. Request structures in light of speech act scenario are clear at a glance. Major components of request consist of core and branches (presuppositional branch, motivational branch and realizational branch). Request structures in a cognitive perspective are thereby supposed to take the following form: (internal modifications) + (presuppositional branch) + (motivational branch) + (realizational branch) + (core). On this basis, we classify request structures into four categories. 1) Opting out; 2) Structure Core: requests are raised through the core in request scenario; 3) Structure Core + branches: requests are raised through the core, together with the support from branches; 4) Structure Branches: requests are raised through branches.Traditional studies of request strategies refer to analysis and induction of how people process vocabulary, syntactic structures, and arrangement of discourse (Liu Guohui, 2002), when they try to perform requests. However, different research results are formulated due to different research perspectives linguists adopt It is, therefore, not surprising that these results appear to be unsystematic. Searle (1975), Leech (1983), Brown & Levinson (1978/1987), and Blum-Kulka (1989) all arrive at different conclusions from different angles. Based on our revision of Mendoza & Hernandez's (2002) cognitive description of request, we redefine request strategy as people's choice of an appropriate point between two opposite forces. On the one hand, the speaker has to remove the obstacles which are possible to prevent the hearer from performing the action requested (Strategy Removal), and on the other he has to be polite and leave the hearer a high degree of optionality (Strategy Politeness). People's final decision on strategies will be influenced by such social factors as social distance and relative power between the interlocutors, rating of imposition, age and gender.We adopt the most frequently employed instrument in speech act studies- DCTs to collect request materials in Chinese. The design of the questionnaire has taken into consideration such social factors as social distance and relative power, with each copy of the questionnaire including 12 discourse completion tasks. The questionnaire was distributed to 100 students from Shandong University and Qingdao Agricultural University. Based upon the analysis of materials we have collected, we find that the most prevailing structure employed in Chinese is Structure Core + branches. Furthermore, in Chinese, people tend to raise requests either through "tempering justice with mercy" (combine Strategy Removal with Strategy Politeness) or through "going all out to remove the obstacles" (Strategy Removal). We also find that such social factors as social distance and relative power can exert influence upon people's choice of structures and strategies.