Learners' use of request modifiers across two University ESP disciplines

• Main Authors: Alicia Martínez-Flor, Esther Usó-Juan
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos 2006-10-01
• Series: Ibérica
• Subjects: interlanguage pragmatics; requests; modifiers; English as a foreign language
• Online Access: http://www.aelfe.org/documents/03-Martinez-Flor.pdf

The field of interlanguage pragmatics has recently received a lot of attention. Among the features examined within this field, learners' awareness and production of a variety of speech acts has been widely investigated in both second and foreign language contexts. Focusing on the latter, there has been increasing interest in analysing learners' use of requests, suggestions and advice acts across different ESP disciplines (Martínez-Flor & Alcón, 2004). However, results from this research provided a partial report of learners' requesting behaviour, since it only dealt with the request head act realisations without considering those devices that accompany such a speech act in order to modify its pragmatic effect (Trosborg, 1995; Sifianou, 1999). Bearing this fact in mind, the present study examines learners' requesting performance from two different ESP disciplines, namely those of English Philology and Computer Science Engineering, with a focus on both the amount and type of modifiers they employ when requesting in two different situations. Findings show on the one hand that learners from the English Philology discipline employed a higher amount of modifiers than the Computer Science Engineering learners; and on the other hand, the analysis of the type of internal and external modifiers employed by both groups revealed a similar trend, which indicates the lack of variety in using these modification devices. On the basis of these findings, some pedagogical implications, as well as suggestions for further research are presented.