Chapter 4 Findings
4.4 Effectiveness
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the request was preceded by a persuasive utterance, stating that the child was unable to assemble a slide out of the building blocks. Justified with this preceding persuasion, the child’s requests successfully won the intended compliance.
As illustrated with the above excerpts, children’s justified requests mostly obtain the intended compliance. As far the current data are concerned, four cases out of the total five justified requests are positively complied. It seems that the provision of persuasive tactics may solicit the intended compliance from the addressee and make the request prevail, as indicated by Ervin-Tripp et al. (1990). In spite of the slight inclination toward the success of persuasive tactics, the general occurrences of them are too infrequent to remark. Other studies in the future may pursue this respect further.
4.4 Effectiveness
It has been pointed out previously that children in question here demonstrate a slight tendency to alter their request forms systematically with their relative status with respect to their parents. To better grasp politeness and communicative appropriateness, it is inevitable to examine the compliance of the alternation of request forms so as to see if the strategic uses of various request forms effectively obtain the desirable compliance ⎯ the effectiveness of a request form. The
effectiveness of formal alternation is thus to be inspected in terms of these respective factors.
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Distribution of Compliance across Major Request Forms* Time 1
Complied 90.9(20) 61.4(35) 90.63(29)
PIP Not complied 9.1(2) 38.6(22) 9.37(3)
*PIP stands for simple imperatives, WAN for WANT statements, IPP for imperatives with sentence-final particles, and Dec for declaratives.
Table 9 above shows the degrees to which children’s request forms positively or negatively gain the intended compliance. To simplify the discussion, all four
categories of compliance are merged into two, namely positive compliance ⎯ by combining temporization with positive compliance, since both show that children eventually gain the desirable compliance, and non-positive compliance ⎯ by combining alternation with non-positive one, since both show that children fail to obtain the desirable compliance. Also, cases of imperatives with tag questions and yes-no interrogatives, because of their rare occurrences, are omitted here to simplify the presentation and discussion.
It appears that children can generally obtain the desirable compliance through out three ages. Children’s effective requests are principally issued with simple imperatives or WANT statements, judged by the tokens and percentages of each request form. Throughout the three ages, simple imperatives on the whole appear to be the most effective request forms of all. About 90% of requests issued with simple imperatives obtain the desirable compliance (90.9% at Time 1 and 90.63% at Time 3),
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except for those observed at the second age, whose effectiveness is lower than the other request forms, with 61.4% of all simple imperative requests. As the second effective request forms, WANT statements generally yield about 70% of compliance on average (61.45%, 66.67% and 84% respectively at three time points).
The effectiveness of these two leading request forms demonstrates a slight development with age. As observed in the table, the percentages of uses of simple imperatives to achieve a successful request are roughly similar at Time 1 and Time 3.
The percentages of complied requests at Time 2, however, reveal that simple
imperatives are not as effective at this time as they are at Time 1 and Time 3, and also compared to the other request forms, such as WANT statements and imperatives with sentence-final particle, at the same time. Requests issued with WANT statements manifest a gradual development across the three time points. The effectiveness of WANT statement requests increases slightly at Time 2, compared to that at Time 1, and continues to increase at Time 3.
As to the other two request forms, the effectiveness of requests with imperatives with sentence-final particles is also high; at Time 1 and 2, such request forms’
effectiveness is even higher than WANT statements (80% vs. 61.54%). The
effectiveness of imperatives with sentence-final particles appears to decline with time, and at Time 3, such request forms appear to be the least effective, comparatively speaking. The effectiveness of declarative requests demonstrates a quite different picture from that of the other three request forms. Relatively speaking, declarative requests are quite ineffective in obtaining the desirable compliance at Time 1. As age develops, such declarative requests turn out to be an effective request form,
particularly at the third age (100%). Generally speaking, children become more able
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to obtain the desirable compliance as they grow older. The interaction between effectiveness of request forms and age is statistically attested to be significantly noteworthy (Two-way ANOVA F (1, 20) = 31.781, p < .001).
The findings reviewed above have indicated that simple imperatives appear to be the most effective request forms to obtain the desirable compliance. This request form, however, may incur undesirable compliance, particularly at the second age. On closer examination, it is found that some of these ineffective simple imperative requests do not entirely result from children’s inappropriate use of request forms. Rather, these requests are rejected because parents may intend to socialize or discipline children or to teach children common knowledge. For example,
(30) You, 2;6, Line 1388
Context: YOU’s mother was teaching YOU about cube sugar.
*MOT: 哇哈 -: 抓到 了 /pibabu/ -: . Waha zhua-dao le
Wow-ha catch LE
‘Ah-ha, I caught you.’
*MOT: 好 換 妳 去 當 鬼.
Hao huan ni qu dang guei Okay change You go be ghost
‘Then, it’s your turn to be the seeker.’
*YOU: 好.
Hao Okay
‘Okay.’
*YOU: 那 <妳 去 當 鬼> [/] 妳 去 當 鬼. ← Na ni qu dang guei ni qu dang guei
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‘Then it’s your turn to be the seeker.’
*MOT: 妳 去 當 鬼. ←
Ni qu dang guei You go be ghost
‘It’s YOUR turn to be the seeker.’
*MOT: 妳 數 一 二 三.
Ni shu yi er san You cout one two three
‘You should count from one on.’
*MOT: 不 可以 偷看 喔.
Bu ke-yi tuo-kan o Not can peek PRT
‘No peeking.’
(31) LGW, 2;6, Line 675
Context: LGW and her father were preparing for a game together.
*LGW: 紙紙 要 放 在 這邊 [= a box] . Zhi-zhi yao fang zai zhebian
Paper have to put at here
‘Paper should be put here.’
*YPC: 0 [=! laughing] .
‘Paper can be put aside.’
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*FAT: +^ 來 給 /bapi/ . Lai gei baba come give dad
‘Here, give me that.’
The child in (30) was playing a hide-and-seek game with her mother and they took turns to be the seeker and the hider. After mother had been done with her turn as the seeker, the child asked her mother to be the seeker for another time. Instead of agreeing with the child’s requests, mother directed the child to be the seeker, since it should be the child’s turn to be the seeker, according to the game rules. Therefore, mother did not comply with the child’s request because she was teaching the child how the game was supposed to proceed.
A similar case is presented in (31). In this excerpt, the child and her father were preparing for a game together. While preparing, the child directed her father to put paper in the place where she was indicating. Her direction was declined for the reason that paper was not needed for the game. Like the previous excerpt, the child’s request was not complied because father was teaching the child about the game they were about to play. In other words, such requests may not be directly considered ineffective, since the motivation for the parents not to comply is not purely relevant to the
appropriate use of request forms. Therefore, when excluding such cases of
uncomplied requests, simple imperatives are nonetheless one of the more effective request forms.
In summary, investigation into the effectiveness of children’s request forms shows that they appear to generally restrict their request forms to simple imperatives and WANT statements, even though they are able to use four different linguistic
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forms to issue their requests and obtain the desirable compliance. A plausible
explanation for this may be that these two request forms are relatively more direct and effective, compared to the other request forms. They seem to decide which request forms to issue their requests on the basis of the potential effectiveness they have acquired in the interaction with their parents.
It has been pointed out previously that children’s deployment of request forms is susceptible to the influence of status. Also, the above presentation just indicates that effectiveness may also have an effect on the use of request forms. It thus seems reasonable to scrutinize the effect of status on the effectiveness of request forms, and hence a lucid picture of children’s linguistic politeness can be unearthed.
Table 10 below presents the effectiveness of request forms in children’s requests issued at different statuses. Again, the percentages of compliances are merged into two categories to simplify the discussion on requests replied with compliance and uncompliance. In addition, percentages of simple imperatives with a tag and yes-no interrogatives are excluded from the following discussion because they are too infrequent to be remarkable.
Considering in terms of both tokens of occurrences and percentages of effectiveness, simple imperatives appear to be rather effective request forms when children are requesting at a higher status. As seen in the table, when issued at higher status, simple imperatives successfully yield the desirable compliance most of the time, particularly at the first and the third ages. Children’s high-status requests at Time 1 appear to be quite effective whichever request form is used. As a seeming complementary distribution, high-status requests at Time 3, however, are only observed to be issued with simple imperatives and manifest a picture of perfect
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effectiveness. At time 2, requests of this sort appear to be rather effective as well, when issued with imperative forms (simple imperatives and imperatives with sentence-final particle). The distribution observed here appears to conform to the theoretical prediction that more direct request forms are used to issue high-status requests and such uses should be effective.
Table 10
Effectiveness of Request Forms with Respect to Status* Time 1
*In the Table, PIP stands for simple imperatives, WANT for WANT statements, IPP for imperatives with
sentence-final particle, Dec for declaratives, H for high status, E for equal status, and L for low status. O represents compliance and X uncompliance.
When children are requesting at an equal status to their parents, simple
imperatives remain the most effective request forms of all, except at Time 2. At Time 2, WANT statement requests appear to be the most effective. However, the low frequency of this form makes this unremarkable. It would be safe to say that at Time 2 these request forms used at an equal status appear to be roughly equally effective. In
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terms of low-status requests, simple imperatives remain the most effective at Time 1.
However, WANT statements and imperatives with sentence-final particle seem to be the most effective request forms, particularly at Time 2. And at Time 3, declaratives become the most effective, while simple imperatives appear to be the secondly effective request forms, followed closely by WANT statements.
The effectiveness of requests with respect to status seems to change with age.
Simple imperative requests’ effectiveness decreases at Time 2 and yet increases at Time 3. Unlike the effectiveness of simple imperatives, the effectiveness of the other request forms seems to increase with age. At Time 2, the effectiveness of imperatives with sentence-final particle and declaratives increases. At the same time, the
effectiveness of WANT statements increases and comes in the first place, surpassing simple imperatives. At Time 3, all request forms can overall successfully obtain the desirable compliance. Interestingly, as children grow older, their low-status requests issued with WANT statements become more effective in gaining the desirable compliance.
Given the above findings, it appears that children, when requesting at different statuses, tend to use different request forms, and the effectiveness of request forms also varies with children’s status. The interaction between status and request forms does not yield a statistically significant difference at Time 1 (Two-way ANOVA F (2, 44) = .602, p > .05), but that observed at Time 2 and Time 3 is attested to be
significant (Two-way ANOVA, F (2, 44) = 6.647, p < .01 at Time 2 and F (2, 44) = 4.909, p < .05 at Time 3). The percentages also exhibit an age-related differences; a statistic test indicates that when growing older, children become more able to obtain their compliance and more able to alter their request forms with reference to status so
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as to gain the compliance (Two way ANOVA, F (1, 138) = 29.096, p < .01 for compliance, and F (2, 138) = 9.36, p < .01). A Post Hoc test on age-related development, moreover, reveals that the effectiveness of children’s request is the greatest at Time 3 (36 months old), compared to that at Time 1 and Time 2. This may mean that children at the age of 36 months old appear to be more sensitive to status and more able to utilize different request forms to reach their communicative goal to have the intended act done.
It have been attested that there seems to be an interaction among effectiveness, status and request forms. How about the interaction between request cost and
effectiveness? Table 11 below shows the effectiveness of request forms with regard to request cost. Identical to the previous tables regarding effectiveness, percentages of compliance are re-summed into two major categories including complied requests and not complied ones to simplify the discussion. Additionally, percentages of request forms with low occurrences are also omitted to avoid complication of the discussion.
As seen in the table, by and large, children appear to obtain the desirable compliance whichever request form they use to issue their middle- and low-cost requests at Time 1 and Time 3, except for declaratives at Time 1. In addition, the table reveals that effectiveness of children’s requests appears to alter with children’s age.
At the third age, children’s requests on the whole produce the desirable effect in cases of middle-cost and low-cost requests. Before this age, children’s requests may
sometimes yield unfavorable effects. A statistic test proves that such development manifests a robust significance (Two-way ANOVA, F (1, 138) = 21.399, p < .001).
Therefore, it seems that as they grow older, children are more able to take request costs into consideration and to use appropriate request forms to generate their
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desirable compliance from their parents, despite a lack of remarkable systematic distribution of request forms and request costs.
Table 11
Effectiveness of Request Forms Regarding Cost* Time 1
*In the table, PIP stands for simple imperatives, WAN for WANT statements, IPP for imperatives with sentence-final particle, Dec for declaratives, H for high cost, M for middle cost, and L for low cost. O represents compliance and X uncompliance.
With respect to low-cost requests, most of request forms appear to be equally effective throughout the ages, except for declaratives at Time 1 and simple
imperatives observed at Time 2. At Time 1, declarative requests appear not to be as effective as the other request forms. At Time 2, WANT statements and the other request forms appear to be relatively more effective than simple imperatives.
The effectiveness of middle-cost requests displays a slightly different picture from that of low-cost requests. Basically, simple imperatives appear to be rather effective request forms in middle-cost requests throughout the three ages. Although
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the table shows that the percentage of complied simple imperative requests declines a little at Time 2, simple imperative requests remain rather effective in the cases of middle-cost requests. In addition, at Time 1, declarative requests seem to be rather ineffective, when issued to convey middle-cost requests. At Time 2, the effectiveness of declarative requests increases greatly, while those of WANT statement requests and requests issued with imperatives with sentence-final particle decrease. The increase of declarative requests at the age, however, may result from the fewer instances of declarative requests.
As to the high-cost requests, none of the request forms appear to be effective. As seen in the table, the percentages of uncomplied responses are higher than those of complied ones. Whichever request form the children draw upon to convey their requests of this sort, they are likely to incur more uncompliance than compliance. It seems that parents in general tend to comply with children’s low-cost and most of their middle-cost requests, and yet not to comply with most of their high-cost requests.
A closer observation discloses that the less effectiveness of children’s high-cost requests appears to be those that may potentially intrude on the other interlocutor.
These uncomplied requests are found to be issued in such situations as lack of joint attention with their parents, ignorance due to lack of joint attention, avoidance of answering question by abrupt topic-switching, or parents’ implement of their principles of parenting. In these situations, adherence to politeness is thus expected.
However, no mitigating linguistic elements, such as social deixis and polite lexemes, or persuasion seem to improve the effectiveness. It is likely that parents are more inclined to reject children’s high-cost requests than to comply with them, and seldom
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do children attempt to reduce the cost with justification, lexical mitigators or polite forms. The following excerpts can serve to illustrate these aspects.
(32) LGW, 2;0, Line 1505
Context: LGW’s mother was asking her of her preferred fairy tale character, while LGW suddenly change the topic by expressing her desire to play with puzzles.
*MOT: 你 喜歡 白雪公主 還是 喜歡 萵苣姑娘?
Ni xihuan Baixuegongzhu haishi xihuan wojuguniang You like Snow White or like Rapunzel
‘Which do you prefer, Snow White or Rapunzel?’
*FAT: 還是 喜歡 青蛙 +/.
Haishi xihuan qingwa Or like frog
‘Or frog…’
*LGW: 我 +...
Wo I
‘I…’
*FAT: +, 青蛙王子?
Qingwaw-wangzi Prince Frog
‘Prince Frog?’
*LGW: <喜歡> [/] 王 +...
Xihuan wang like king
‘like prin…’
*LGW: 喜歡 <公主 的> [/] . Xihuan gongzhu de like princess DE
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‘[I] like princess stories’
*MOT: 的 什麼?
De shemo DE what
‘What princess stories?’
*LGW: 0 [=! coughing] .
*FAT: 萵苣姑娘 還是 白雪公主?
Wojuguniang haishi Baixuegongzhu Rapunzel or Snow White
‘Rapunzel or Snow White?’
*MOT: 還是 <青> [>] 蛙王子?
Haishi qing- wa-wangzi Or Prince Frog
‘Or Prince Frog?’
*LGW: <媽> [<] 媽媽 我 要 拼圖. ← Ma mama wo yao pingtu
Mom mom I want puzzle
‘Mom, mom, I want to play puzzles.’
*MOT: 0 [=! laughing] .
*YPC: 0 [=! laughing] .
*FAT: 你 要 拼圖?
Ni yao pingtu You want puzzle
‘You want to play puzzles?’
‘You want to play puzzles?’