Chapter 4 Findings
4.5 Summary
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the awareness of the appropriate and effective way to reach the communicative goal.
4.5 Summary
Based on children’s spontaneous speech with their parents in family settings, Mandarin-speaking children’s requests and their politeness are scrutinized in this chapter. One objective of this study is to disclose the request forms drawn upon by children to issue their requests, and the development in their uses of request forms. As to politeness in requests, the study is mainly concerned with the factors that may potentially influence children’s strategic use of request forms so as to adhere to politeness, and the development of children’s politeness across ages.
The findings reveal that the children, when requesting, were found to utilize various linguistic forms from an early age on, as early as 2 years old. They are likely to encode their request intents with simple imperatives, WANT statements,
imperatives with sentence-final particle, declaratives, imperatives with a tag, and yes-no interrogatives; with the former four formal devices as the primary request forms observed in the data at hand. Among the four primary request forms, simple imperatives are found to be the most prevalent request forms, while WANT statements the secondly frequent ones.
A careful investigation into the correspondence between request forms and contextual situations reveals that children’s uses of request forms appear to be contextually sensitive and the correspondence also manifests an age-related
development. The development changes from a rudimentary division of labor between the uses of simple imperatives and WANT statements, with the former
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disproportionately used in interactive activities and both more preferred in common talks to a further consolidation of the division of labor and expanded uses of request forms in a wider variety of contexts. It is likely that the second age, i.e., two years and six months old, is an important age in the development of the association between children’s request forms and the contextual situations.
In the examination as to children’s use of social deixis and polite forms, it has been showed that only a small number of children’s requests are issued with explicit social deixis or polite forms. With a closer inspection, children are found to use social deixis or polite lexemes mostly in situations where they are at a lower status or when their requests may potentially intrude on the interlocutor or the current interaction. It appears that children’s uses of social deixis are rather strategic and conform to the requirements of politeness, despite the infrequent occurrences of social deixis observed in the data. In addition, a further examination over the polite forms reveals that children during the period of observation may not spontaneously use the polite form, like qing, until they are explicitly instructed or implicitly hinted to.
In the respect of directness of request forms, children are found to use either relatively direct request forms or indirect forms to issue their requests, but they seldom use request forms that may distribute in the middle of the directness scale. In addition, the findings also disclose a slight influence of status on children’s uses of request forms. When they are requesting at a higher or equal status, they tend to use simple imperatives most of the time. On the other hand, when they are requesting at a lower status, WANT statements may become a more likely choice, and the requests of this sort generally aim to ask their parents to fulfill their needs or desire.
Request costs, however, seem not to have an observable effect on children’s uses
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of request forms. Children tend to use either simple imperatives or WANT statements as the primary request forms, regardless of request costs. Tone of speech, moreover, appears not to influence children’s utilization of request forms; a considerable number of children’s requests appear issued in a plain tone, neither aggravated nor mitigated.
The investigation into children’s persuasion shows that children use only a limited number of justifications to make their requests more persuasive. When attempting to make their requests more persuasive, children generally justify their requests issued with simple imperatives and WANT statements. Despite the infrequency of their justifications, children can by and large gain the desirable compliance, as long as they justify their requests. This thus accord with what Ervin-Tripp et al. (1990) have found in their study concerning English-speaking children’s politeness in control acts.
In addition, the findings show that children are likely to use more effective forms to convey their requests. As a result, a lion share of children’s requests observed are primarily issued with simple imperatives and sometimes with WANT statements.
When status is also considered, a systematic distribution as to the effective request forms seems to be noticeable. Simple imperatives turn out to be the most effective request forms when children are requesting at an equal status; WANT statements, in contrast, seem to be the most effective request form when children are requesting at a lower status. Such a systematic distribution appears particularly noteworthy at 30 months and 36 months old. Request costs, however, are found not to interact with effectiveness as status does. Whichever request forms are used, children’s requests, particularly middle-cost and low-cost ones, on the whole obtain the desirable effect, but conversely their high-cost ones mostly fail to do so. Nonetheless, children’s
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effectiveness is found to increase with children’s age; the older they grow, the more able they can obtain the desirable compliance.
In addition to request costs, tone of speech seems not to interact with the effectiveness of children’s requests, either. Children mostly are able to gain the intended compliance from their parents with requests spoken in a plain or mitigated tone. On the other hand, their aggravated requests turn out to be greatly ineffective. In a nutshell, children are more inclined to use comparatively more effective forms to convey their requests, and the effectiveness of their requests are found to interact with status, but not with request cost or tone of speech. It seems that the third age, namely 3;0, may be a crucial age in the ability to clearly identify the factors that may
potentially affect the politeness and effectiveness of a request forms. In other words, this age may be a significant age in children’s development of linguistic politeness.
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