Investigating Second Language Request Strategies by a Chinese Undergraduate Student Majoring in Business English

Abstract

Making requests is one of the most commonplace pragmatic behaviors in daily interactions. This present paper attempts to specifically examine the use of second language (L2) request strategies by a single English major in China. By providing four different role-play scenarios in which relative power (+/–P) and social distance (+/–D) were deliberately designed as the contextual constraints, while low ranking of imposition (–R) was kept constant, this case study elicited and audio-recorded the participant’s conversational data via WeChat. Drawing upon the coding scheme developed by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984), the study showcased that the participant was inclined to chiefly employ conventionally indirect requests and more external modification devices than internal ones in all the role-plays. In addition, the participant’s inappropriate adoption of direct requests in the first and third role-plays and written responses to the follow-up survey questions suggested that he was not conscious of the contextual variables at all when performing requests. In conclusion, some pedagogical recommendations are proposed to enhance L2 learners’ pragmatic competence by integrating pragmatic instruction into English language classes.