Indirect Requests Research Articles

KAJIAN PENERJEMAHAN REQUEST EXPRESSION PADA FILM THE LAST SONG DALAM PERSPEKTIF PENDIDIKAN

This research aims at describing how request expression found in film entitled The Last Song translated from English to Bahasa Indonesia. There are 27 data gained in this research. In the research first the researcher identified the request expression in the conversation from the film. The request expression then classified based on the types of request expression. In this research some conclusions are drawn from the analysis. There are two types of request expressions; direct request expression with the subtypes namely mood derivable, obligation statement and performative and indirect request expression with the subtypes namely suggestory formulae, query-preparatory and mild hint. It is also concluded that most of the translations of request expressions are accurate only small part of the translations are not accurate.

Elliptical Responses to Direct and Indirect Requests for Information.

We present two studies examining the factors that lead speakers to produce elliptical responses to requests for information. Following Clark and Levelt and Kelter, experimenters called businesses and asked about their closing time (e.g., Can you tell me what time you close?). Participants provided the requested information in full sentence responses (We close at 9) or elliptical responses (At 9). A reanalysis of data from previous experiments using this paradigm shows that participants are more likely to produce an elliptical response when the question is a direct request for information (What time do you close?) than when the question is an indirect request for information (Can you tell me what time you close?). Participants were less likely to produce an elliptical response when they began their answer by providing a yes/no response (e.g., Sure . . . we close at 9). A new experiment replicated these findings, and further showed that elliptical responses were less likely when (1) irrelevant linguistic content was inserted between the question and the participant's response, and (2) participants verbalized signs of difficulty retrieving the requested information. This latter effect is most prominent in response to questions that are seen as very polite (May I ask you what time you close?). We discuss the role that the recoverability of the intended meaning of the ellipsis, the accessibility of potential antecedents for the ellipsis, pragmatic factors, and memory retrieval play in shaping the production of ellipsis.

Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That? On Some Rhetorical Questions Which Function as Indirect Requests

Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That? On Some Rhetorical Questions Which Function as Indirect Requests

On the role of politeness in online human–human tutoring

AbstractResearchers have demonstrated that dialogue‐based intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) can be effective in assisting students in learning. However, little research has attempted to explore the necessity of equipping dialogue‐based ITS with one of the most important capabilities of human tutors, that is, maintaining polite interactions with students, which is essential to provide students with a pleasant learning experience. In this study, we examined the role of politeness by analysing a large‐scale real‐world dataset consisting of over 14K online human–human tutorial dialogues. Specifically, we employed linguistic theories of politeness to characterise the politeness levels of tutor–student‐generated utterances, investigated the correlation between the politeness levels of tutors' utterances and students' problem‐solving performance and quantified the power of politeness in predicting students' problem‐solving performance by applying Gradient Tree Boosting. The study results showed that: (i) in the effective tutorial sessions (ie, sessions in which students successfully solved problems), tutors tended to be very polite at the start of a tutorial session and become more direct to guide students as the session progressed; (ii) students with better performance in solving problems tended to be more polite at the beginning and the end of a tutorial session than their counterparts who failed to solve problems; (iii) the correlation between tutors' polite expressions and students' performance was not evident in non‐instructional communication; and (iv) politeness alone cannot adequately reveal students' problem‐solving performance, and thus other factors (eg, sentiment contained in utterances) should also be taken into account. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Human–human tutoring is acknowledged as an effective instructional method. Polite expression can help strengthen the relationship between tutors and students. Polite expression can promote students' learning achievements in many educational contexts. What this paper adds By considering the students' prior progress on a problem‐based learning task, we demonstrated the extent to which tutors and students display politeness in tutoring dialogues. Tutors' polite expressions might not correlate with students' problem‐solving performance in online human–human tutoring dialogues. Politeness alone was insufficient to predict the students' performance. Implications for practice Tutors might consider using words with positive sentiment values to express politeness to students with prior progress, which might encourage those students to make a further effort. The polite strategy of expressing indirect requests could help tutors mitigate the sense of directness, but this strategy should be carefully used in delivering instructional hints, especially for students without prior progress. To better assist students without prior progress, tutors might consider using more direct expression to explicitly guide students.

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

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.

Use of Polite Request Forms by Jordanian Children: Do Age and Gender Have an Impact?

This study aimed at finding the strategies of politeness in requests as well as the potential differences between Jordanian children in their use of such strategies. The study compared the participants on the basis of two variables: age and gender. According to the age variable, the participants were divided into three groups: 5, 7 and 9 year-olds. Each group contained 24 participants who were then divided into 12 males and 12 females. The researchers used video-recording to elicit the participants' requests while they ask the researchers for some cookies. On the basis of age, the findings support previous research that age has an obvious effect on the use of politeness in requests. It was found that nine-year-olds were more able to use indirect forms of requests than seven and five- year- old children. Although 5 and 7-year-olds were able to use indirect forms, they opted more to direct requests that have a semantic softener. On the basis of gender, the differences between males and females in using direct and indirect requests were irrelevant.

Transactional relationships between maternal requesting and responsivity, adolescent compliance, and task demands in fragile X syndrome

BackgroundMales with fragile X syndrome (FXS) may have difficulty with social communication and language in addition to behavioral concerns such as noncompliance to maternal requests. Mothers vary in how they pose requests to their children, and contextual demands may also be a factor in compliance. This study examined the relationships between maternal requesting behaviors, maternal responsivity, child compliance, and task demands in adolescent males with FXS. Methods35 mother-son dyads completed three interactive tasks during in-home visits (puzzle, iPad games, snack). The adolescents also completed assessments of language and autism symptoms. The three interactive tasks were video-recorded, and behavior-by-behavior coding and transcription was completed. ResultsComparing between tasks, mothers requested a behavior most often during the snack task and used a higher proportion of indirect requests during the iPad task. Adolescents were largely compliant across tasks, with average compliance equal to 70%. Adolescent compliance was predicted by maternal request frequency such that mothers who used more requests had adolescent sons who were less compliant. Maternal responsivity was higher for mothers of adolescents with FXS-only compared to those with FXS and high autism symptoms. Conclusions and implicationsTask demands may have influenced maternal requesting, which in turn may have impacted adolescent compliance. Compliance with requests is important for both social and educational aspects of life, and further study of requesting and compliance in FXS is needed to identify effective teaching and behavioral intervention methods.

Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests – CORRIGENDUM

Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests – CORRIGENDUM

Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests

AbstractSome utterances are pragmatically ambiguous. For instance, Tu peux fermer la fenêtre ? (“Can you close the window?”) can be a request for information or an “indirect request” (IR) to close the window. A possible way for speakers to make it clear whether they intend these expressions as a direct or indirect speech act is to use cues such as gestures or prosody. It has been shown for English that participants’ identifications of IRs are predicted by f0 slope, mean f0, and f0 duration. However, the extent to which these findings extend to other languages remains unknown. In this article, we explore the prosodic features associated with French IRs, a language poorly documented from that perspective. We address two research questions: Are listeners’ pragmatic interpretations of French IR constructions predicted by speaker’s original intent? Do prosodic cues play the same role in French modal interrogatives as in declarative remarks? We find, first, that remarks with more positive f0 slope are more likely to be interpreted as requests, but modal interrogatives with more positive f0 slope are more likely to be taken as questions. Second, while longer remarks were more likely to be interpreted as requests, longer modal interrogatives were more likely to be interpreted as questions.

An AN ANALYSIS OF REQUESTING SPEECH ACT OF MAIN CHARACTERS IN THE MALEFICENT:MISTRESS OF EVIL MOVIE BY DISNEY

Requesting speech acts are commonly used in everyday interactions. However, because of its nature to ask on others, it is very important that people choose the right strategy in making requests. This research is to describe strategies of the requesting speech acts that are used by main characters in the Maleficent:Mistress of Evil movie based on Trosborgs theory. This research used qualitative research that examines the use of the requesting speech in the movie. In this research result, the researcher found utterances of requesting speech act used by the main characters, in which there are 4 types and divided into 8 sub-types, namely, 5 Indirect Request; 7 Hearer-Oriented Conditions ( 3 Willingness/Ability, 4 Suggestory Formulae); 1 Speaker-Oriented Conditions, ( 0 Wishes, 1 Needs/Desires) and 24 Direct Requests (4 Obligation, 1 Performative, 19 Imperative ). So it can be concluded that in the main characters' request utterances, almost all requesting speech act strategy was found in which there were 38 total data.Keywords: Requesting Speech act, Movie, Main Characters.

Politeness Strategies on Students’ Responses to Teacher’s Online Announcements

The shift of the usual operations in education from face-to-face to distance learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has made the Google classroom one of the online learning modalities. The study aims to identify the politeness strategies employed in students' responses to the Bukidnon State University teachers' Google classroom announcement within three semesters. It also explores the significant difference between genders in employing politeness strategies. The study applied a mixed-method research design. The findings show that the students employ four politeness strategies of Brown and Levinson (1987): Positive, Negative, Bald-On-Record, and Off-Record Strategies. In addition, the male students frequently use negative politeness strategies, which contradicts Lakoff (1975) claims that women's language consists of hedges, apologies, and indirect requests, a negative politeness strategy. Thus, determining significant differences in politeness strategies among students needs other factors such as cultural differences, gender language, gender performativity, and teachers' announcement to which the students respond.

572-P: Perspectives of People with Diabetes and Caregivers Experiencing Insulin Pump Infusion Set Failure (IPISF) : A Qualitative Study

Aim: IPISF can be a life-threatening complication and remains a serious issue for individuals who utilize automated insulin delivery (AID) systems. This study assessed the emotional burden of IPISF and how infusion failure affects sentiment towards insulin pump use. Methods: 50 follow-on interviews (10/2020 - 05/2021) were performed with Caregivers (CG) and People with Diabetes (PWD) from the 2020 Diatech Diabetes - T1D Exchange Insulin Pump Infusion Set Failure Management Survey. Participants consented to a 1-hour video call interview covering topics related to insulin pump use and experiences with infusion set failures. Audio recordings were transcribed using Trint Software and qualitative interview data was analyzed using thematic analysis, R, and Python. Results: 39 PWD and CG were interviewed (PWD age 40.1±20.9 years, CG age 46.2±6.3 years, 72% female, 72% white, 50% household income ≥$100K/year, CSII use for 11.5±8.2 years, 48% use AID, HbA1c 6.9±1.4%, TIR 69.9±18.9%, infusion set wear time 2.9±0.8 days, 62% having ≥1 IPISF/month) . Participants shared quotes on how IPISF is “a direct correlation to my level of happiness...kind of irks me and just makes me angry...because as the caregiver, it's my responsibility to make sure that it goes right” and technology that reduces IPISF and improves detection “would probably be the first step in making me even reconsider going back on the pump.” Identified themes showcase the burden of diagnosing and managing infusion failures when overcoming existing alarm fatigue, trusting care team input, and general stress of CSII therapy. Conclusions: IPISF’s clinical impact is associated with hyperglycemia and DKA, yet IPISF can also affect the mental health of people who use CSII therapy. CSII users heavily rely on hyperglycemia to detect IPISF and can have issues identifying true IPISF from other confounding factors, thus increasing the risk of CSII therapy and justifying the need for better IPISF detection. Disclosure L.E.Blanco: Other Relationship; Diatech Diabetes, Inc. L.M.Vanengelen: None. J.C.Gray: Other Relationship; Diatech Diabetes, Inc. J.H.Wilcox: Other Relationship; Diatech Diabetes, Inc. Funding The West Coast Consortium for Technology & Innovation in Pediatrics (Indirect Support Request)

“Can you read my mind?” Conventionalized indirect requests and Theory of Mind abilities

Recent proposals in pragmatics identified two types of pragmatics: linguistic-pragmatics and social-pragmatics, as comprehension seems to rely on linguistic and Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities to different extents depending on the phenomenon. In this respect, a clear picture of indirect requests (IRs) processing is lacking. Experimental works suggest non-conventionalized IRs are processed by means of a conversational implicature based on metarepresentation of the whole utterance, therefore belonging to social-pragmatics. However, it is unclear whether this applies to conventionalized IRs, which are globally processed faster than non-conventionalized IRs. Conventionalized IRs are either conversational implicatures requiring ToM, though “short-circuited” (but still derived globally); or a linguistic-pragmatics phenomenon whose processing is triggered locally. Our study investigates to what extent mentalizing is involved in their comprehension. Ninety-one Italian adults (mean age = 35.85(9.85)) performed a self-paced region-by-region reading task where Can you…? forms were presented in a directive, non-directive, and sarcastic condition. Reading times were calculated per sentence and per sentence-region. ToM abilities were also tested. Results suggest that conventionalized IRs processing starts locally, triggered by the Can you. Individual ToM differences had an impact, but mainly on the Can you sentence-region. These findings seem to support a view of conventionalized IRs as a linguistic-pragmatics phenomenon.

The Role of Prosody in Disambiguating English Indirect Requests.

Ambiguity pervades language. The sentence "My office is really hot" could be interpreted as a complaint about the temperature or as an indirect request to turn on the air conditioning. How do comprehenders determine a speaker's intended interpretation? One possibility is that speakers and comprehenders exploit prosody to overcome the pragmatic ambiguity inherent in indirect requests. In a pre-registered behavioral experiment, we find that human listeners can successfully determine whether a given utterance was intended as a request at a rate above chance (55%), above and beyond the prior probability of a given sentence being interpreted as a request. Moreover, we find that a classifier equipped with seven acoustic features can detect the original intent of an utterance with 65% accuracy. Finally, consistent with past work, the duration, pitch, and pitch slope of an utterance emerge both as significant correlates of a speaker's original intent and as predictors of comprehenders' pragmatic interpretation. These results suggest that human and machine comprehenders alike can use prosody to enrich the meaning of ambiguous utterances, such as indirect requests.

A Cross-Cultural Comparative Study of American Native Speakers of English and Moroccan EFL University Students’ Production of the Speech Act of Request

The purpose of this study was to investigate the production of request strategies, request sub-strategies, and request orientations by Moroccan EFL learners (MEFLLs) and American native speakers of English (ANSE). To achieve this objective, the researcher adopted a mixed approach by collecting data through a semi-structured interview and a discourse completion test. The DCT is composed of ten situations adopted from Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns project and modified by Khamam (2012). Thirty MEFLLs and thirty ANSE responded to the discourse completion test, while four MEFLLs and three ANSE were interviewed. Furthermore, to analyse said and unsaid requests, this study relied on Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) coding scheme and Marti’s (2006) model. The results showed that MEFLLs differed from ANSE in several ways. MEFLLs were more direct than ANSE, as they used direct request strategies and hearer-oriented requests more than ANSE. However, the two groups preferred the conventionally indirect request strategy to the other request strategies. Regarding request sub-strategies, the two groups frequently selected the query preparatory strategy. Nevertheless, it was chosen by ANSE more than MEFLLs.

Compréhension du langage figuré par les enfants et adolescents avec un trouble du spectre de l’autisme : étude longitudinale des processus inférentiels

This research investigates the developmental trajectories of non-literal language comprehension by children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. This 12-month longitudinal study focuses on three main forms of non-literal language requiring increasingly expensive inferential processing: indirect requests, idioms and irony. The performance of 12 children and adolescents with ASD without intellectual developmental disorders is compared to their age-, gender- and language-matched controls. Rather than a stable global deficit, the results point to a partial and progressive alteration of inferential abilities in participants with ASD. This study opens up clinical perspectives on the assessment of non-literal language comprehension by individuals with ASD.

Frequency and types of indirect requests in Hungarian

The paper presents the frequency and types of illocutionary metonymy in Hungarian directives in various social contexts, taking into account the evoked elements of the request scenarios. The recognized and construed social relations have an impact not only on addressive forms but also on the appearance of other elements such as indirectness and its scalarity, which clearly shows that human language activity reflects the physical and social worlds of the intersubjective context (cf. Verschueren 1999).
 Indirect directives are based on illocutionary metonymic scenarios (Panther–Thornburg 1998) and by evoking a part of the scenario referring to the core action, they give access to the illocutionary scenario domain. The scalar nature of indirectness (Panther–Thornburg 1997, 1999, 2007) depends on the number of evoked elements and their conceptual distance from the core of the request. As the gathered material shows, social context has an impact not only on indirectness of the request but also its structure and type.
 The paper, based on a discourse completion test conducted among Hungarian data providers, presents not only the frequency of particular types of illocutionary indirectness in specific social contexts but also analyses the most frequent strategies attested by Hungarian data, taking into consideration their type and place in the illocutionary request scenario and compares the social contexts of indirectness with the social context of direct directives. The analysis of material gathered by a discourse completion test shows a correlation between social context and directness in requests in Hungarian, also highlighting the practices of being indirect by using hints, referring to common background knowledge, and employing conventional indirect requests.

Politeness in the Realization of Requests in a Multilingual Setting: An Interlanguage Study of English Language Learners in Pakistan

This paper aims to examine the notions of politeness in the context of the most repeated strategies of request that the Pakistani undergraduate English language learners (ELLs) articulate in multilingual classrooms. Guided by the qualitative research design, sixty ELLs comprising two different ethnic groups (Siraiki-speaking and Pashto-speaking) served as the participants. Selected through purposive sampling from a university in Pakistan, the data are collected through discourse completion tasks, role plays, and focus group discussion. Analyzed according to the taxonomy of cross-cultural speech acts realization patterns for requests, the findings of the study reveal that Pakistani ELLs used conventionally indirect requests commonly than supplementary strategies, which were executed through certain traits of politeness. To furnish ELLs with pragmatic competence, this study suggests a few key strategies needed for both in terms of pedagogical practice in Pakistani multilingual classrooms.

The effect of intonation on the illocutionary force of declaratives in child comprehension

We report on a novel experimental paradigm that investigates preschoolers’ inter-pretations of clause types, with a focus on the distinctions between polar interrogatives, falling declaratives, and rising declaratives. Prior research demonstrates that by about age three, children have acquired the links between the main clause types and their canonical speech acts, and shows that they are also aware of indirect requests. But as of yet, there is no work exploring their comprehension of rising declaratives. Our results suggest that children possess an adult-like understanding of pragmatics and prosody that allows them to uncover the intended illocutionary force of speakers’ utterances.

Understanding indirect requests for information in high-functioning autism

Few works have addressed the processing of indirect requests in High-Functioning Autism (HFA), and results are conflicting. Some studies report HFA individuals’ difficulties in indirect requests comprehension; others suggest that it might be preserved in HFA. Furthermore, the role of Theory of Mind in understanding indirect requests is an open issue. The goal of this work is twofold: first, assessing whether comprehension of indirect requests for information is preserved in HFA; second, exploring whether mind-reading skills predict this ability. We tested a group of (n = 14; 9–12 years) HFA children and two groups of younger (n = 19; 5–6 years) and older (n = 28; 9–12 years) typically developing (TD) children in a semi-structured task involving direct, indirect and highly indirect requests for information. Results suggested that HFA can understand indirect and highly indirect requests, as well as TD children. Yet, while Theory of Mind skills seem to enhance older TD children understanding, this is not the case for HFA children. Therefore, interestingly, they could rely on different interpretative strategies.