Chinese and American Request Strategy: A Study on the Speech Act Behavior of the College Students

摘要

Request speech act is frequently performed in daily life. The present study examines request strategies produced by Chinese and American college students in English. 30 Chinese and 30 Americans participate in the study and they all major in management. The data are collected by means of a modified written Discourse Completion Test. The findings indicate Chinese and American college students have more similarities than differences in terms of request strategy. However, Chinese are influenced by pragmatic transfer when they choose request strategies. The study has implications to develop Chinese English learners' sociopragmatic and intercultural competence, which will facilitate intercultural communication and management in the future.