Using Multiple Requests in a Second Language

Abstract

This study examines how L2 learners at different levels of proficiency use multiple requests. The study employs interactive role-play data from two groups of learners of Indonesian and from a baseline group of L1 Indonesian speakers. The L1 speakers produced many multiple requests before the initial second pair part, as well as many additional requests at a later stage of the interaction, as post-expanding moves. As for the High group of learners, while they produced fewer multiple requests than the L1 speakers, all their multiple requests were well-aligned to the discourse and served target-like functions: to pursue absent assent, or to recapitulate after intervening material, or both. The Low group of learners, on the other hand, produced few target-like multiple requests, and also produced ones that were misaligned or otherwise interactionally unsuccessful. The study suggests that ability to use multiple requests is strongly linked to general linguistic proficiency. It suggests learners with low proficiency will tend to use them in idiosyncratic ways, and that even proficient learners will tend to use them relatively rarely. The study also adds to our scant cross-cultural pragmatic knowledge about multiple requests by identifying certain functions they are likely to serve across many languages.