Chinese requests: In comparison to American and Japanese requests and with reference to the “East-West divide”

Abstract

This paper reports an empirical investigation of Chinese requests using Hill et al's (1986) methodology. The study has yielded the following findings. (1) Chinese requests seem to be determined by Brown and Levinson's notions of power and distance, as are Japanese and American English requests as reported in Hill et al., (2) Chinese requests may not be as direct as has been argued in the literature. We view these findings as evidence for Brown and Levinson's universal theory of politeness but against the claim that East and West are fundamentally different in their respective politeness systems (cf. Chen, 2010; Leech, 2007).