A Contrastive Study On Request Strategies In Categorized Contexts Of International Communication

Considering the worldwide importance of the use of English as a means of international communication and information exchange, the pragmatic competence of EFL learners in international communication has aroused the interest of many researchers both at home and abroad. Although request strategies have been widely studied by many researchers, most from the perspective of cross-cultural pragmatics, the main difference of this study lies in the mutual influence of request strategy employment and categorized contexts of international communication. In other words, request strategies are chosen according to the degree of formality of different contexts, while the gradation of strategy employment should reflect the features of contexts.Based on a DCT questionnaire survey of 74 American college students and 124 Chinese advanced EFL learners including 70 Chinese English majors and 54 Chinese non-English majors, this contrastive study investigated the English request realization and strategy employment by Chinese advanced EFL learners and English native speakers in two categorized contexts of international communication, namely daily communication and academic exchange. The result of analysis indicates all subjects generally agree on the higher degree of formality in academic exchange than daily communication, and accordingly employ more politeness strategies in academic context of international communication. However, the Chinese advanced EFL learners seem to lack sufficient knowledge of pragmatic features and show limitations in the range and flexibility of strategy employment. In addition, the verbosity and inappropriateness in request modification strategies may result in the misunderstanding or even failure in international communication, which exert more ill effects than mere grammatical errors.Finally, the study shows some significance of international communication pragmatics, and gives implications and suggestions for teaching Chinese advanced EFL learners international communication pragmatic ability in the future.