A Study on The Use of Downgraders in Request Realization : Contrasting Japanese Learners of English with Native Speakers of English

Abstract

This study examines the respective influence of three factors on the realization of requests by Japanese EFL learners in high-imposition situations. These three factors were the Length of Stay in an English-Speaking Environment, the use of Syntactic Downgraders and the use of Lexical Downgrades. Request realizations in four different situations on a Discourse Completion Test were judged for appropriacy by a native speaker. These appropriacy scores were compared with each of the three independent variables above. It could be seen that all three factors had a significant effect on the appropriacy of requests. Qualitative analysis of the data, in which the requests of JEFLLs were compared with those of NSs, showed that JEFLLs used a limited range of syntactic downgraders and very few lexical downgraders at all, other than 'please', which was shown to be an ineffective downgrader as compared to other lexical downgraders. Conclusions could be drawn from this, concerning the positive effect of spending an extended period of time (more than three months) in an ESE, and also concerning the need for a greater variety of syntactic and, in particular, lexical downgraders to be included in teaching materials and explicit teacher input in the classroom. INTRODUCTION According to Bachman (1990), 'pragmatic competence' sits alongside 'organizational competence' as one of the two chief constituents of communicative competence. 'Organizational competence' refers to our knowledge of form, whereas 'pragmatic competence' is concerned with use. Extensive grammatical and lexical knowledge of a language is useless as a communicative tool unless we know how and when to use that knowledge. Study into L2 pragmatics is generally termed interlanguage pragmatics or 1LP (Kasper & Schmidt, 1996). Seminal works in this field include Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper (1989) and Kasper & Blum-Kulka (1993). More recently, attention has been focused on how pragmatic knowledge can be taught in the classroom, the kind of materials which can present it effectively, and how it can be accurately assessed (Rose & Kasper, 2001). One of the main focuses of interest within the field of ILP has been Speech Acts, in particular requests and apologies. As they are both face-threatening by nature, and as their realization can vary considerably according to situation of use, they are a rich area for insight into the development of pragmatic competence. Brown & Levinson (1987) showed the importance of the three factors of Power (P) , Distance (D) and Ranking of Imposition (R) in the politeness of speech acts. Pragmatic competence requires the language user to be able to vary their language appropriately for these factors in a given situation in the given language. Negative sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic transfer from the LI can result in pragmatic failure for the L2 learner. This study focuses on the effective realization of requests in high Rank of Imposition situations by Japanese EFL learners (JEFLLs) , as compared to Native Speakers of English (NSs). More specifically, it looks at the use of internal mitigation in requests, in the form of syntactic and lexical downgrading. BIum-Kulka, House & Kasper (1989) produced a comprehensive analysis of syntactic and lexical downgrades in their CCSARP Coding Manual. For reasons of space, readers are referred to that Manual for full details. Below are some of the more commonexamples of these downgrades: : '