An Empirical Study On The Influence Of The Different Language Contexts On The Development Of The Intercultural Style

The intercultural style hypothesis has been examined in the bidirectional transferbetween English and Hebrew, between Spanish and English and between Hungarianand English, since it was proposed by Blum-Kulka in1991. The present studycompares the Chinese request behavior of the Chinese students whose majors are notEnglish, the Chinese and English requests of students majoring in English and theChinese and English requests of Chinese students studying in America. It aims toexamine that the hypothesis also exists in the requests of Chinese learners of English.Besides, by comparing the Chinese and English requests of the latter two groups, wealso concludes that different language environments affect the formation of theintercultural styles, specifically, the subjects in the target language environment havea more typical intercultural style.The present study collected data by DCT and analyzed the requesting behavior bySPSS. We also analyzed the six request elements in each context from bothquantitative and qualitative perspectives. It came to three conclusions:1) thedifferences of the Chinese requests among the three groups revealed that the Chineserequests of the students majoring in English and those studying in America have beeninfluenced by their English;2) the similarities and differences between the Chineseand English requests produced by the latter two groups indicated that the interculturalstyle did exist in the requests of Chinese learners of English but it was not so typicalas that revealed in other research;3) Compared with students majoring in English，those studying in America, due to their target community, have a more typicalintercultural style.