Chapter 4 Findings
4.2 Children’s Politeness in Requests
4.2.2 Directness of request forms and politeness
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social deixis in interaction in a strategic way; they seem to use social deixis when they really need to, mostly when the request cost is high. In addition, the few occurrences of social deixis may also mean that in parent-child conversations occurring in family setting, the deference to politeness is required only to a limited extent. Moreover, as shown in Table 3, children’s uses of first person plural pronoun is not observed until Time 2, while their uses of address terms is observed earlier. The discrepancy may disclose that the use of a different personal pronoun is highly likely a relatively more advanced ability in this respect. Last but not least, the spontaneous use of the
conventional polite form qing may be a more mature ability that develops at a later age; children may have known the form, but they tend not to use it until they are explicitly encouraged, particularly in parent-child interaction.
4.2.2 Directness of request forms and politeness
According to a number of previous studies, politeness may be enacted with relatively less direct linguistic forms conveying less direct illocutionary forces.
Children are found to be able to produce both indirect and direct requests, although a number of studies have argued that the correspondence between directness of
linguistic forms and politeness may not be straightforward (e.g., Blum-Kulka, 1987;
Brown and Levinson, 1987; Ervin-Tripp, 1977; Garton & Pratt, 1990; Garvey, 1975;
Gordon and Ervin-Tripp, 1984). In addition, as discussed in Chapter 3, the directness of request forms should be considered as a continuum ranging from the direct pole to the indirect pole. The directness of a request form should be evaluated in terms of
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both linguistic forms used to issue the request and explicitness of intention or
illocutionary force encoded in the form. In this study, it is assumed that children may adhere to politeness on the basis of the basic correlation between directness and politeness; namely, they may utilize less direct request forms to issue their requests so as to defer to politeness. In this section, findings in the directness of children’s request forms and the correspondence between directness and politeness are to be discussed, based on the framework proposed by Ervin-Tripp et al. (1990). The findings on children’s linguistic developments are presented according to the directness of request forms and the effect of cost and status on children’s performance of linguistic
politeness. The presentation here focuses mainly on the effect that politeness factors, such as status and cost, may have on children’s uses of request forms.
Table 4 below, repeating Table 1, shows the distribution of request forms across age. On the basis of the scale of directness proposed in Chapter 3, the investigation into the data shows that children’s uses of request forms appear to polarize in directness. They seem to majorly use either bluntly direct request forms, namely simple imperatives, or comparatively greater indirect request forms, namely
declaratives, to issue their requests throughout the three ages, instead of request forms that are medial in the directness scale ⎯ imperatives with sentence-final particle, imperatives with tag, and yes-no interrogatives. As seen in Table 4, a majority of children’s requests appear to be direct ones, while a small percentage of requests are indirect. The finding here reveals that although children are able to produce both direct and indirect requests at an early age, they may primarily use direct request forms, particularly in interactions with their parents.
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The Directness of Request Forms across Age4
Time1 (N) Time 2 (N) Time 3 (N) Simple
Imperatives 42.31%(22) 50.0%(57) 45.07%(32) WANT
Statements 25.0%(13) 23.68%(27) 35.21%(25)
Imperatives with
Declaratives 23.08%(12) 12.28%(17) 15.49%(11)
Total (52) (114) (71)
It is generally assumed that the directness of a request form may imply politeness.
In Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987) and Leech’s politeness principle (1983), politeness is mainly contingent on the directness of a linguistic forms. Other studies, however, has pointed out that the relationship between the directness of a linguistic form and the politeness of the form is not as straightforward as it is assumed in theories (e.g., Blum-Kulka, 1987; 1990; Clancy, 1986; Held, 1989). To further understand the relationship between directness of request forms and politeness, the directness of request forms will be further examined with reference to children’s status as opposed to their parents’ and the cost of a request in the immediate context, since it is suggested by Brown and Levinson (1987) and Ervin-Tripp et al. (1990) that interpersonal status and request cost can be two crucial factors in politeness.
Table 5 below shows the percentages of request forms issued when children’s
4 According to the scale proposed in Chapter 3, some requests forms always explicitly convey the intended action, and thus implicit cases of these forms are left unmarked to avoid confusion.
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status is relatively higher or lower than or equal to their parents’. Children and their parents may be involved in different interactional situations, and in various situations, the relative status between children and their parents may be different. For example, children are normally at a lower status, as opposed to their parents, in common talks, while they may be at an equal status in cooperative activities. As shown in Table 5, there appears to be a systematic correspondence between directness of request forms and status. The relatively more direct forms, namely simple imperatives with explicit intention, turn out generally found in situations where children’s status is equal to their parents (26.92% at Time 1, 22.81% at Time 2, and 22.54% at Time 3). In addition, simple imperatives are also observed to issue low-status requests at Time 2 and Time 3 (21.05% and 18.31% respectively). On the other hand, the second mostly prevalent request forms, i.e., WANT statements, may be primarily used by children when they are requesting at a lower status (13.46% at Time 1, 22.81% at Time 2, and 21.13% at Time 3).
Occasionally, children may also request with WANT statements when their status are equal to their parents’, but the percentages of such requests are
comparatively lower than those of requests issued with simple imperatives in the same situations. On the contrary, those request forms whose directness is close to the more indirect pole, namely declaratives with explicit or implicit intention, are mainly observed in situations when children’s status is inferior to their parents, but the percentages observed is by and large lower than those of WANT statements. Despite the seeming systematic distribution of request forms across status, a statistic test reveals that such apparent discrepancies appear not significant at all times (ANOVA, F (2, 45) = 1.503, p > .05 at Time1; F (2, 45) = 1.825, p > .05 at Time 2; F (2, 45) =
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1.538, p > .05). The statistic test also indicates that children are highly inclined to issue their requests mainly with simple imperatives and WANT statements during the time period of observation (ANOVA, F (7, 40) = 3.849, p < .01 at Time 1; F (7, 40) = 2.94, p < .05; F (7, 40) = 5.913, p < .001). Therefore, it is safe to say, for the time being, that children aged between 24 months to 36 months old may have established a rudimentary correspondence between directness of request forms and status, which can be roughly observed in the distribution of simple imperatives and WANT statements, with simple imperatives enacting equal- and low-status requests and WANT statements issuing low-status requests.
Table 5
* PIP is for simple imperatives, WAN for WANT statements, IPP for imperatives with sentence-final particle, IPT for imperatives with tags, YNQ for yes-no interrogatives, DEC for declaratives, H for high status, L for low status, and E for equal status. ‘Explicit’ refers to requests with explicit intention, while ‘implicit’ to those without.
The correspondence between directness of request forms and status is also found irrelevant to age (ANAOV, F (2, 141) = 0.042, p > .05). It can be seen in Table 5 that
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children, from Time 1 on, i.e., two years old, seem to use more simple imperatives to request at equal status, and more WANT statements at a lower status, and such inclination remains at Time 2 and Time 3. In addition, the insignificant temporal development of the correspondence between request forms and status may be
attributed to the tendency that children mainly rely on simple imperatives and WANT statements as their two primary request forms throughout three ages, since the statistic test shows that the mean percentages of simple imperatives and WANT statements at all times are distinctively higher than those of other request forms.
The apparent consistent distribution between status and simple imperatives and WANT statements can be illustrated with excerpts in the following.
(22) YOU, 2;0, Line 1062
Context: YOU and her mother were playing a doctor-patient game, where YOU was being the doctor while her mother was being the patient.
*YOU: 張 開來 [% mimicking a doctor] . ← zhang kai-lai
spread open
‘Open your mouth.’
*MOT: 啊 -: [= open the mouth] . A
Ah
‘Ah…’
*MOT: 有 發炎 嗎?
YOU fa-ian ma Have infection PRT
‘Is there an infection?’
*MOT: 我 有 發炎 嗎?
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‘Do I have an infection?’
*MOT: 我 有 發炎 嗎?
Wo YOU fa-jan ma I have infection PRT
‘Do I have an infection?’
*MOT: 嗯?
‘Do I have an infection?’
(23) LGW, 3;2, Line 761
Context: LGW and her father were putting things in a bag together.
*FAT: 好 # 我們 收起來.
Hao women shou-qi-lai Okay we put-it-away
‘Okay, let’s put things away.’
*FAT: 好不好?
‘You hold this and I put things away.
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*FAT: 好 # 我 拿著 你 收.
Hao wo na-zhe ni shou Okay I hold you put-away.
‘Okay, I hold this and you put things away.’
*FAT: 我 拿著.
Wo na-zhe I hold
‘I hold this.’
*FAT: 啊 你 收 進來.
A ni shou jin-lai Ah you put in-come
‘Ah, you put things in.’
*FAT: 來 [= open the bag].
Lai Come
‘Come on.’
Excerpts (22) and (23) above exemplify children’s uses of simple imperative request forms when they are at a higher or equal status with regard to their parents. In (22), the child asked her mother to open her mouth so that she could examine the potential infection in her mother’s throat with a relatively more direct request form, i.e., simple imperative. Being a doctor, the child knew that her status was higher than her
mother’s, who was acting as a patient, in the immediate context and it would be appropriate for her to ask her mother to do an act with a more direct or
straightforward request form. In addition, such a direct request form as simple imperative is also used when children’s interactional status is equal to their parents’, as seen in excerpt (23). In this excerpt, the child’s father suggested that they put
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things back in a bag together as a cooperative activity. Given the suggestive utterance, the child then knew that her status was equal to her father’s and she thus directed her father to hold the bag for her to put things into the bag with a simple imperative, a more direct request form.
In contrast, WANT statements may appear to be the dominant request forms when children’s interactional status is relatively lower than their parents’ in the immediate context, as mentioned previously, for example:
(24) LGW, 2;6, Line 72
Context: LGW was given a cup of pudding, and she was asking for permission to have the pudding.
*LGW: 我 要 吃 大的. ←
Wo yao chi da-de I want eat big
‘I want to have the big one.’
*MOT: 大的.
Da-de Big
‘The big one.’
*MOT: 哇 好 大 喔 [= scoop some pudding into a bowl].
Wa hao da o Wow so big PRT
‘Wow, it’s really big.’
*LGW: 呃 -: [= make nauseating sounds].
E Yuck
‘Yuck.’
*MOT: 呃 什麼.
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‘It’s a caramel pudding.’
*LGW: 我 要 吃 布丁. ←
‘You can eat by yourself.’
(25) YOU, 2;6, Line 1053
Context: YOU and her mother were having juice and YOU was asking for more.
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*YOU: 我 還 要 [= drink to the very last drop]. ← Wo hai yao
I more want
‘I want more.’
*MOT: 自己 喝 自己的.
Ziji he ziji-de Self drink self’s
‘You drink your own juice.’
*MOT: 給 妳 吃 小 餅乾.
Gei ni chi xiao bing-gan Give you eat little cookie
‘I’ll give you some little cookies instead.’
The above two excerpts (24) and (25) were taken from the conversations where the children were interacting with their parents as themselves (as a child) and asking for things to meet their physical thirst or hunger. Interacting with their parents as a child, children were requesting at a lower status with respect to their parents. At a lower status, children then drew upon WANT statements to issue their request. As shown in Table 5, WANT statements account for most of the requests issued when children are at a lower status in the current data, and a majority of such requests seem intended to have the children’s parents to fulfill their need or desire. There seems to be a clear tendency for children to make use of parents’ role as a caregiver to issue their low-status requests with WANT statements.
On the other end of the directness scale of request forms are declaratives with explicit or implicit intention, whose directness is comparatively less than those that are discussed above. Although these forms are mostly found when children are
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requesting at a lower status, percentages of these request forms show that they are relatively rare in the data. Excerpts (26) and (27) below can illustrate these cases and the situations where they can be observed.
(26) YOU, 3;0, Line 1820
Context: YOU pretended to fall and get hurt.
*YOU: 唉 /i/ [= pretend to fall] . Ai
Ouch
‘Ouch!’
*FAT: 怎麼 姊姊 <也 摔一跤 呢> [>] ? Zemo jiejie ye shuai-yi-jiao ne How sister too fall PRT
‘How come you fell too?’
*YOU: <好 痛 好 痛> [<] . ← Hao tong hao tong
so hurt so hurt
‘It hurts so badly.’
*MOT: 喔 喔 -: . O o Oh oh
‘Oh-oh!’
*MOT: <我 揉一揉> [/] 我 揉一揉.
Wo rou-yi-rou wo rou-yi-rou I rub-one-rub I rub-one-rub
‘Let’s rub at it.’
*MOT: 好 了.
Hao le Okay LE
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‘Okay, you’re fine.’
(27) LGW, 3;0, Line 2394
Context: LGW and her mother were playing with building blocks. LGW was trying to assemble a slide with the blocks.
*LGW: 我 不會 做 # 做 那個.
Wo buhui zuo zuo na-ge I can’t do do that
‘I don’t know how to do that one.’
*MOT: 做 哪個?
Zuo na-ge Do which one
‘Which one?’
*MOT: 你 要 做 哪個?
Ni yao zuo na-ge You want do which one
‘Which one do you want to do?’
*LGW: 媽 我 不會. ←
Ma wo bu-hui Mom I can’t
‘Mom, I don’t know how to do it.’
*LGW: 你 教 我 做 溜滑梯.
Ni jiao wo zuo liu-hua-ti You teach me do slide
‘You teach me how to make a slide.’
*MOT: 溜滑梯 喔.
Liu-hua-ti o
Slide PRT
‘Oh, a slide.’
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In (26) the child issued a request indirectly with a declarative without explicitly conveying her intent in the utterance. Requesting this way, the child was intending to hint to her mother to take care of her after she got hurt. On the other hand, the child in (27) requested with a declarative with explicit intention. By issuing a request
indirectly with such a form, the child successfully asked her mother to help her with the assembly of a slide out of the building blocks.
In essence, children are found to demonstrate a rudimentary association between request forms and interpersonal status, albeit such an association is not robustly distinctive. Simple imperatives appear primarily drawn upon to request when
children’s status is equal to that of their parents’. On the contrary, children may make use of WANT statements or more indirect request forms when they are relatively at a lower status. During the period, ranging from 24 months to 36 months, children may not have consolidated a consistently systematic correspondence between various request forms and status differences, but rather they appear to demonstrate a
rudimentary association between directness of request forms and status. As far as the data are concerned, a systematic association in this respect may develop later than 36 months old.
In addition to status, children’s request forms may be subject to cost of a request (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Ervin-Tripp et al., 1990) as well. According to
Ervin-Tripp et al. (1990), cost essentially means the degree of intrusion a request may impose on the addressee or the current interaction. It is thus crucial to avoid intrusion when requesting so as to respect politeness, since requests are inherently imposing (Brown and Levinson, 1987) and can be intrusive (Ervin-Tripp, et al., 1990).
Distributions of directness of request forms with respect to cost across ages are
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Distributions of Directness of Request Forms Regarding Cost across Age*
Time1
* PIP is for simple imperatives, WAN for WANT statements, IPP for imperatives with sentence-final particle, IPT for imperatives with tags, YNQ for yes-no interrogatives, DEC for declaratives, H for high status, L for low status, and E for equal status. ‘Explicit’ refers to requests with explicit intention, while ‘implicit’ to those without.
The table indicates that children’s uses of request forms appear not to remarkably interact with the cost of a request. Children’s requests appear to be skewed toward those with middle or neutral cost, which may require a minimal redressiveness to avoid imposition on the addressee. Such a distribution is especially obvious at Time 2 (30.5 months old) and Time 3 (36 months old). The overall comparison of the mean percentages of requests with different costs shows no significant difference. Yet, a Post Hoc test reveals that the mean percentages of middle-cost requests slightly outnumbers the other two types.
The distributions of the directness of request forms in this respect nevertheless demonstrate a remarkably significant difference at all times (ANOVA, F (7, 40) = 4.429, p < .01 at Time 1; F (7, 40) = 4.649, p < .01 at Time 2; F (7, 40) = 5.416, p
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< .001 at Time 3). This may thus reveal that children tend to pivot on a particular set of request forms to issue requests. As shown in Table 6, an apparent complementary distribution of simple imperatives, WANT statements, and declaratives can be noticed at first age. At this age, simple imperatives are used to issue low-cost requests, while WANT statements are utilized to express high-cost requests. In contrast, declaratives, with explicit or implicit intention, are by and large drawn upon to make middle-cost requests. Such a distribution may show that low-cost requests are issued with more direct request forms, while middle-cost requests are likely to be formally various. The use of WANT statements to issue high-cost requests may be accounted for in terms of children’s construal of parents’ caregiver role; children may take advantage of their
‘weaker’ child role and have their parents fulfill their nursing role by satisfying children’s needs. This distribution observed at this time seems to conform to what the theories predict; more direct request forms are used to issue low-cost requests, while more indirect request forms are used for requests with higher cost.
The distribution noticed at Time 1 alters at Time 2. At the second age, simple imperatives appear not to be utilized to issue low-cost requests. Instead, they are
The distribution noticed at Time 1 alters at Time 2. At the second age, simple imperatives appear not to be utilized to issue low-cost requests. Instead, they are