How Russians pre-request and seek assistance: a study of interaction in two communities of practice

Abstract

Before asking another person to do something, it is common to check whether they are available by asking preliminary questions, or pre-request. Pre-requesting is considered a politeness strategy used to mitigate face threat or avoid committing a request proper at all. This article focuses on analyzing Russian pre-request sequences and demonstrates how they are organized and expanded in particular communities of practice. The examples have been taken from a corpus of naturally-occurring data with recordings made of two communities of practice, a workplace and an extended family. In the workplace a common respond to a pre-request is teasing, which can also lead to a sequence expansion. In the second community of practice, family, it is common for some members to avoid a request proper through initiating a series of pre-requests and hints.