Requesting Strategies in Nigerian and British English: A Corpus-Based Approach

Abstract

AbstractA request is a speech act with which speakers want the listener to perform an act that benefits them. For this reason, different linguistic strategies ranging from direct imperatives to indirect declarative sentences are available, and their choice is determined by factors such as the power relationship and social distance between the interlocutors. Requesting strategies are known to differ across different languages and language varieties, but no systematic studies have explored which factors determine the linguistic form of requests in Nigerian English. In this chapter, a corpus-based approach is used for investigating requesting strategies in relation to the factors social distance and power relationship as well as language mode in both Nigerian and British English. The findings show that while social distance and power relationship systematically determine the choice of requesting strategies in British English, they play no role in Nigerian English. Language mode does not influence the choice of requesting strategies in either variety.KeywordsNigerian EnglishBritish EnglishRequestCorpus-based approachInterlocutors