Leiden University Student Repository

Chen, Yi (2014)

Am I Being Polite?--An Investigation of Chinese students’ pragmatic competence in the realization of politeness strategies in English requests

Master thesis | Linguistics (MA)

Second language learning is difficult when social context is involved, especially if the culture of the target language is inherently different from the native one. A full command of a second language involves a linguistic and ideological ‘reframing’ process. At this stage, pragmatic competence is crucial to interlanguage learners. The realization of speech acts, such as implementing politeness strategies, requires a high command of not only linguistic but also social knowledge. This research investigated Chinese English learners’ command of making polite requests with regard to applying different politeness strategies by conducting tests amongst Chinese high school and university students. After analysing the results, some problems are displayed and explanations are ventured.

Interlanguage learning

Politeness theory

Pragmatics

Request

Second language acquisition

Second language learning

Author

Chen, Yi

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Language and Communication

Supervisors

Boogaart, R.J.U.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en