The Three Groups’ Selections of the Three Main Request Strategies

According to Brown and Levinson’s formula of the assessment of the weighness comprising Social Status, Social Distance and Rank of Imposition of an FTA reviewed in section 2.2.2, certain strategies would be adopted as illustrated in Figure 2.1 section 2.2.2 to minimize the threat and doing an FTA without redressive action baldly (i.e., “the most direct, clear…concise way such as “Do X!” (Brown & Levinson, 1987:69) would be the last choice when the weightiness of a FTA is high since it threatens hearers’ face most. House and Kasper (1981) also claim that when the weightiness of an FTA increases, speakers will be more likely to select negative politeness strategies than positive politeness strategies for the former are more redressive than the later.

Based on the result of Scaled-response questions (SRQ) shown in Table 4.1.2, and 4.1.3 mentioned in section 4.1, it was reasonable to assume that our CL1 group would use less Direct strategies than the EL1 group did since CL1s and Chinese EFLs felt that performing request behaviors was of higher degree of Imposition than EL1s on the whole.

Firstly, Chi-square tests were applied to examine whether the three groups differ in their use of each of the three main strategies—Direct, Conventional Indirect and Non-Conventional indirect strategies respectively. As displayed in Table 4.2.2 below, the result suggested that the three groups significantly differed in their use of Direct strategies

(χ²=23.19, df=2, P≤ .000) and Conventional Indirect strategies (χ²=8.86, df=2, P≤ .01), but not in Non-Conventional Indirect strategies (χ²=2.44, df=2, P>.05). Participants’ use of few percentage of Non-Conventional Indirect strategies supported Blum-Kulka & House’s (1989), Lee-Wong’s(1994) and Zhang’s(1995) studies that the use Non-Conventional Indirect in performing request behaviors was few (Blum-Kulka & House’s: 0% to 18%;

Lee-Wong’s:1.1%; Zhang’s:7%).

Table 4.2. 2 Groups’ Use of Three Main Strategies Overall

Overall Direct Conventional Non-conventional No total

51 514 23 12 600

1.EL1s

8.5% 85.7% 4% 2% 100%

108 477 15 NA 600

2.Chinese EFLs

18% 80% 2% NA 100%

93 483 24 NA 600

3.CL1s

15.5% 80.5% 4% NA 100%

Chi-square (χ²) 23.19 8.86 2.44 NA

P-value 0.000*** .012* .295

Pair comparison

1*3χ², df=1 13.19 5.70 .022

P-value .000** .021* .883

1*2χ²,df=1 22.62 7.93 1.74

P-value .000*** .006** .248

2*3^{χ 2}, df=1 1.35 .188 2.15

P-value .279 .666 .192

Note: 1. Underlined numbers referred to raw number of requestive responses.

P value: *P<.05, **P<.01, P<.001

Again, pair comparisons were performed by Chi-square tests in order to examine which pair contributes to statistically significant differences in Direct, and Conventional Indirect strategies respectively and if pragmatic transfer occurs. As presented in Table 4.2.2.2 mentioned above, the result showed that with regard to Direct strategies, both pairs of EL1s vs. CL1s (χ²=13.19, df=1, p≤ .01) and EL1s vs. Chinese EFLs(χ²=22.62, df=1, p≤ .000)

significantly differed in their use of Direct strategies while Chinese EFLs vs. CL1s (χ²=1.35, df=1, P>.05) did not. The result implied that CL1s (15.5%) and Chinese EFLs (18%) prevailingly used more Direct strategies than EL1s (8.5%) did, which is against the result of SRQ that CL1s and Chinese EFLs significantly felt higher degree of Imposition in performing request behaviors than EL1s did and it is expected that CL1s should use less Direct strategies than EL1s did according to Brown & Levinson’s (1987) possible strategies in doing FTA.

Furthermore, Chinese EFLs negatively transferred CL1 Direct strategies to L2 since significant difference was found in EL1s vs. CL1s (P<.01) and EL1s vs. Chinese EFLs (P<.001) but no significant difference was found in Chinese EFLs vs. CL1s (P>.05).

Regarding Conventional Indirect strategies, both pairs of EL1s vs. CL1s (χ²=5.7, df=1, p≤ .05) and EL1s vs. Chinese EFLs (χ²=7. 93, df=1, p≤ .01) significantly differ in their use of Conventional Indirect strategies but Chinese EFLs vs. CL1s (χ²=.188, df=1, P>.05) did not. It can be inferred from the result that Chinese EFLs (80%) and CL1s (80.5%) obviously use less Conventional Indirect strategies than EL1s (85.7 %) did. Chinese EFLs negatively transferred CL1 Conventional Indirect strategies to their L2 since significant difference was found between EL1s vs. CL1s (p<.05) and EL1s vs. Chinese EFLs (P<.01) but no significant difference was found between Chinese EFLs vs. CL1s (P>.05).

The results shown above confirmed Yu’s (1999) result that overall CL1s and Chinese EFLs significantly used more Direct strategies than EL1s did and used less Conventional Indirect strategies than EL1s did. Comparing strategy selections of CL1s and Chinese EFLs, it was noted that contrasted to Yu’s study that Chinese EFLs used more Direct strategies and less Conventional Indirect strategies than CL1s did overall, the result of the present study indicated that overall, Chinese EFLs and CL1s differed in their use of Direct and Conventional Indirect strategies in the present study. Such a phenomenon may result from

the fact that Chinese EFLs in the present study represented learners of low proficiency who may rely on their L1 pragmatic knowledge heavily and negatively transfer their L1 into L2 whereas learners in Yu’s represented learners of intermediate-to advanced proficiency whose TOEFL score was higher than 575 and were more “pragmatically competent” than low- English- proficiency learners. Furthermore, comparing participants’ responses of Non-conventional Indirect strategies to Yu’s, fewer responses were obtained in the present study (2%~4%) than in Yu’s (EL1s:13%, Chinese EFLs:2%, CL1s: 5% ). The reason may be that Low Status, Low Distance and Low Imposition situations, in which Non-conventional Indirect strategies were less frequently used, were included in the present study but not in Yu’s. Besides, the result that less than 5% Non-Conventional Indirect strategies were used by the three groups in the present study also conform the previous studies on the act of request (Blum-Kulka & House’s: 0% to 18%; Lee-Wong’s:1.1%; Zhang’s:7%).

To sum up, the tendency of strategy preferences of EL1s, Chinese EFLs and CL1s was identical—Conventional Indirect> Direct > Non-conventional Indirect strategy and such a tendency, which supported to Blum-Kulka’s (1989) claim that Conventional Indirect strategies were more polite than Non-conventional Indirect strategies when performing the act of request, was also found in all contexts when contextual factors were concerned as discussed in the next section. Non-conventional Indirect strategies were less used than the other two strategies by all the three groups.

Though Chinese EFLs and CL1s perceived higher degree of Imposition and Difficulty than EL1s with regard to request behaviors, their request behaviors did not correspond to their request performances that overall both CL1s (15.5%) and Chinese EFLs(18%) significantly used more Direct strategies than EL1s (8.5%) and significantly use less Conventional-Indirect (CL1s: 80.5%; Chinese EFLs 80%) than EL1s (85.7%) did. Thus, Direct strategies in Chinese culture seemed not to be necessarily impolite. Therefore, further analysis should be carried out to examine how CL1s perform request behaviors in different contextual situations.