Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.2 Requests as a Speech Act
2.2.2 Children’s requests
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
children’s comprehension of directives also concur with children’s inability to tell requests from commands (Babelot & Marcos, 1999; Elrod; 1983). Elrod (1983) specifically noted that young children tended to interpret different subtypes of directives as one type. From the above review, it is obvious that children at an early age may yet to have the ability to tell commands from requests. Therefore, it seems reasonable to consider all young children’s directive illocutionary acts as one single type.
Whether children distinguish requests from commands, however, still requires further studies to clarify. In order not to complicate the issues in question here, the present study thus considers the illocutionary acts to get the addressee to perform an act desired by the speaker as requests.
2.2.2 Children’s requests
Despite the various terminologies read in previous studies, researchers generally reported that children demonstrate their communicative intents, requests in particular, in their early infancy, even before they are able to produce any linguistic elements (Bates, 1976; Bates et al., 1975; Bruner, 1981; 1983; Gordon & Ervin-Tripp, 1984;
Ervin-Tripp, 1977; Hsu, 1996; Kelly, 2007; Marcos, 2001; Ninio & Snow, 1996; 1999;
Zhou, 2002).4 Bates et al. (1975) argued that in the prelinguistic stage children have been able to produce such illocutionary acts as requests, or proto-imperatives in their
4 Dore (1978), however, on the basis of Searle’s (1969) speech act theory, rejected the argument to consider prelinguistic communicative behavior or gestures as speech acts, since these communicative behavior lacked grammatical elements associated with the illocutionary acts.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
term, with nonverbal communicative means. As growing older, children then learn gradually to replace these nonverbal means with appropriate linguistic forms. In addition, Bruner’s (1981; 1983) longitudinal observation on two children also lends support to this argument that children develop their requests in early infancy. Based on his observation, Bruner pointed out that at an early stage, the two children
requested with reaching gestures accompanied by an effortful sound. At a later stage, the effortful sounds were replaced with vocatives or intonational contours and their requestive gestures became conventionalized. As they grew older, the two children gradually substituted the gestures with linguistic forms. Moreover, relying on a large scale of project on children’s development of communicative acts, Ninio and Snow (1996) reported that during the time from 14 to 18 months children’s ability to request has already developed. Children during this period tend to restrict their request forms to a small set of verb forms, usually imperatives or infinitive forms. Later on, between 18 and 32 months, children’s request forms grow in varieties, but they have yet to demonstrate any adult-like forms. According to Ninio and Snow, even though
children are unable to request with linguistic forms that adults may generally use, they have been able to match utterances directly onto appropriate intentions with respect to particular interpersonal situations.
Studies on Mandarin-speaking children also remark that children’s early development of their pragmatic ability to request. Hsu (1996) observed that early at the one-word stage, children already have had command of different speech acts, including requests, even though at this stage they could yet master little syntactic devices to encode their speech acts. Hsu further commented that not until the age of
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
three have children acquired all speech acts and complex linguistic forms to encode their speech acts. In addition, Zhou (2002) also observed that Mandarin-speaking children as young as 14 months have been able to perform requests, although they have not been able to respond appropriately to requests.
The literature on children’s pragmatic development apparently indicates that the ability to convey requests develops early. The early development of requests has brought abundant studies in this respect. It is therefore worthwhile to explore children’s requests, particularly non-English-speaking children, so as to contribute cross-linguistic insights.
Requests reflect a requester’s social awareness and social knowledge. When requesting, one is managing to have his/her own needs or desires to be fulfilled by another person. The fulfillment of one’s needs or desire may be in conflict with another person’s. Thus, in order for one person to successfully perform a request, i.e., to have their requests complied with; s/he may need to pay attention to the social factors that make a particular request effective. Children’s requests are also found to be subject to social factors, such as interpersonal relationship, status, power, age, interaction situation, etc. (Babelot & Marcos, 1999; Garvey, 1975; Giovanna, 1996;
Gordon & Ervin-Tripp, 1984; Leonard, 1993; Sealey, 1999; Wood & Gardner, 1980).
Gordon and Ervin-Tripp (1984) observed that children’s production of requests or instrumental languages in their term might require the coordination of both social and verbal or linguistic knowledge. According to Gordon and Ervin-Tripp, social and situational factors may have an effect on children’s various request strategies, acts, utterance forms, nuances, and persuasive arguments. Social variables include power,
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
familiarity or social distance, and situational factors consist of right, obligation, ownership, intrusiveness, disruption, and difficulty to comply. Requests not only conform to these variables and factors but also reflect the effects of these factors.
Hence, studying requests enables us to find out what aspects of social relations are important to children when they are performing a speech acts (Gordon & Ervin-Tripp, 1984).
Other studies also demonstrate that children’s requests can reveal their knowledge of politeness. In a study comparing children’s requests and refusals in negotiations, Leonard (1993) indicated that children at this stage (ranging from 3;6 to 5;5) were better at requesting than at refusing and that children’s request strategies varied with the degree of politeness required in a particular situation. As pointed out by Leonard, when they needed to make polite requests, children used such politeness markers as please or interrogative forms. They also offered reasons to justify their requests. In addition, Axia (1996) found that when asking their parents to buy them an object, children might employ strategic requests pertaining to politeness and
indirectness. She found that children could predict how their parents may respond to their requests and modify their requests accordingly. These two studies, namely Leonard (1993) and Axia (1996), therefore further provide the present study with a basis to examine children’s politeness in their requests.
In addition to the emergence and the general development of children’s speech acts, researchers have also been concerned with the linguistic repertoire, or a set of linguistic forms, used by children to encode a particular speech act. Garvey (1974, pp.
46-47), on the basis of speech act theory, classified requests observed in her child
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
corpus into direct requests, indirect requests, and inferred requests. Direct requests referred to the cases expressed with either imperative forms, e.g. Close the window, or with a performative verb, such as request or ask. Indirect requests were further
divided into two subtypes, dubbed as Type I and Type II by Garvey. Indirect requests Type I referred to the cases in which the illocutionary act is embedded in such matrix clauses as I want you…, Can you…, Would you (be willing to)…, and Will you….
Indirect requests Type II referred to the cases in which the requester requests by referencing the requestee’s status and/or other relevant property of the intended illocutionary act, e.g. You have to close the window. Indirect requests Type II, according to Garvey, also included the cases in which the matrix clause does not reference the sincerity condition of a request, but other imperative clause, e.g. See if you can get the window open. Finally, the inferred requests referred to the cases in which the requester specifies a desire for a state of affairs or something without specifically asking the requestee to perform the intended illocutionary act. In these cases the requestee may need to infer the intended illocutionary act. Cases of this type can be illustrated with I want some water and The window should be closed.
In addition to classifying request instances on the basis of theories, some
researchers sorted out the repertoire of requests out of real data produced by children (Bates, 1976; Carter, 1974; Dore, 1973; Halliday, 1975; cited in Ervin-Tripp, 1977).
Ervin-Tripp (1976, 1977) assembled the linguistic devices used by children to request.
These linguistic devices thus comprise children’s repertoire of request. The repertoire of requests proposed by Ervin-Tripp is as follows:
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
NEED STATEMENTS (or Statements of Personal Desire) [e.g.] I want a green milk shake.
I’d like to speak to Officer Kernan.
I don’t want no more fighting out of the girls.
IMPERATIVES
[e.g.] Be back here at three o’clock.
Let my brother alone.
Shut up, you sucker.
IMBEDDED IMPERATIVES
[e.g.] John, would you please tell that lady to quit?
Could you come out to 4425 Clemons Street?
PERMISSION DIRECTIVES [e.g.] May I have the police?
Can I speak to her?
QUESTION DIRECTIVES
[e.g.] Hey, you got a quarter, Mac?
Boy, what you doin’ out there?
HINTS
[e.g.] I’m the sergeant around here.
Last person talk to me like that is in his grave.
It’s hot out here. (Mitchell-Kernan & Kernan, 1977, p. 192)
In addition, Ervin-Tripp (1977) also reviewed the development of children’s repertoire of request. She reported that children first use gestures, name of objects, and such linguistic forms as want and more. The next development pertained to the
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
elaboration of vocabulary, inflections, and syntax by specifying of problems, goals, imperative acts, possessives, routines, and structural modifications, such as Would you like to play the train, Will you give me a hand, Can you give me a block, and You could give it to me. In the later half of the third year, children would request by indicating conditions that need to be fixed by adults. During this period, children would also be able to request indirectly without specifying the intended act or the benefactor of the intended act. Before they turned four years old, children would be able to produce inferential requests. They might hint and have their addressee to infer the desired act.
As reviewed above, early in the 1970 studies on English-speaking children have generalized the repertoire of children’s requests and the development of the repertoire.
In contrast, up to date Mandarin-speaking children’s repertoire of requests remains little explored and documented, despite the studies accomplished by Hsu (1996) and Zhou (2002). Hsu’s study was dedicated to the development of children’s linguistic competence and in his study speech acts comprised only a subpart. His study was indeed a revelation and introduction of the issues pertaining to Chinese children’s development of language and aims to provoke in-depth studies. Although Zhou (2002) focused mainly on the development of children’s communicative competence,
particularly on their communicative acts, the repertoire of children’s speech acts seemed not to be systematically discussed in her study, let alone the repertoire of requests. As a result, a part of this study is dedicated to the repertoire of
Mandarin-speaking children’s requests — the linguistic devices used by children to request in naturalistic conversations.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學