Exploring the Speech Act of Requesting by German-English Bilinguals in Workplace Scenarios

Abstract

Culturally different ways of requesting can raise the possibility of misunderstanding in a 21st century workplace. Following the goal of Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) to engender communicative skills that foster intercultural understanding, the present study examines how German immigrants living in the United States make requests in the workplace. This query aims to shed light on bilingual pragmatic and intercultural competence. A total of 17 participants completed oral discourse completion tasks. The results showed that the German-English bilinguals tended to blend socio-pragmatic norms of both languages into a unique bilingual pragmatic competence. Overall, they were more direct in German than in English when making requests, showing awareness of intercultural differences. In their German responses, the bilinguals appeared to be even more direct than Germans in previous studies. Furthermore, participants’ higher use of hints attests to pragmatic competence at the workplace, as hints were almost exclusively used with superiors. The findings help to better equip employees who work in global workplaces to express and understand requests. The findings also inform LSP curriculum, which is ideally situated to educate future workers in effective intercultural communication.