A Comparative Study of Request Strategies In Mongolian And English

Abstract

The current study focused on the necessity to expand the current level of speech act studies in inter-language and cross-cultural pragmatics in Mongolia. It compared request realization tactics used by native speakers of Mongolian (n=86) and those of English (n=87) based on directness classifications identified by Blum Kulka et al. (1989). The data was gathered through the discourse completion test (DCT) in which the participants completed the discourse with request patterns depending on eight different social situations. All request expressions were classified into three major categories according to the degree of directness: direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect. The results of the study show that Mongolian participants generally preferred direct strategies in situations where they knew the hearer well not depending on his or her social status, while English-speaking participants tended to use more conventionally indirect speech in the same situations.