Request realizations in Cantonese-speaking school-aged children

Abstract

Request realizations have been mainly investigated in adults. Studies in Western languages consistently documented a preference for conventionally indirect strategies and this finding supports the notion of the universality of speech acts. Few studies have investigated request realizations in Cantonese, and these studies have focused only on capturing cross-linguistic pragmatic abilities rather than examining the profiles and patterns of Cantonese request realizations. Age and gender differences—crucial aspects in child language acquisition—have not been explored in studies of Cantonese request realizations by school-aged children. Other than the production of request realizations, factors affecting the choice of request strategies, alerters, internal modifications, and supportive moves remain unexplored in Cantonese. Power, social distance, and rank of imposition are the social variables noted in politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987) that determine the weightiness of a face threatening act. This study aimed at documenting profiles and patterns of request strategies and all request constituents used by Cantonese-speaking school-aged children in diverse situations that also varied in two levels (i.e., high and low) for the social variables. This study recruited 120 students from four Hong Kong primary schools. Twenty boys and girls were each recruited from primary 1, primary 3, and primary 5. The participants verbally produced utterances based on the 32 situations presented by the Sequenced Cartoon Request Elicitation Task (SCaRET), which is a sampling tool specifically designed for eliciting request realizations from school-aged children. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were employed to analyze the request strategies and all request constituents. Results indicated that conventionally indirect strategies were the most preferred strategies, followed by direct and conventionally indirect strategies. This finding supported the notion of universality of speech acts. Secondly, more modifications were used in direct strategies than indirect strategies. Thirdly, alerters and internal modifications were commonly used in the requests. Supportive moves were used in around twenty-five percent of the sampled requests. The subtypes and the linguistic forms used in each of the request strategy types and constituents were documented. Age differences were identified in direct strategies, non-conventionally indirect strategies, alerters, and supportive moves. Statistically significant age differences from primary 1 to primary 3 indicated a decrease of direct strategies, and a decrease of non-conventionally indirect strategies and alerters. On the other hand, statistically significant age differences from primary 3 to primary 5 indicated an increase of direct strategies and supportive moves, and a decrease of non-conventionally indirect strategies between these two ages. Gender differences were not prominent in the sampled request strategies. Only the mood derivable and the want statement showed statistically group differences among all analyzed request strategies and constituents. However, subtle gender differences were found from qualitative analysis of the use of supportive moves. Girls produced the most complicated request realizations, with four and five supportive moves. More girls produced request realizations with three supportive moves than boys. The study identified that power, social distance, and rank of imposition played effects on choosing request strategies and modifications. The rank of imposition played a stronger role than power and social distance. The study discussed the obtained findings in relation to the literature. The thesis concluded by identifying the significance, and limitations, of the study and outlined possible future research directions.