Cortesía verbal y nivel de oblicuidad en la producción de peticiones por hablantes de inglés y de español

Laburpena

The main purpose of the present study is to compare the selection of level of directness in the production of requests by native speakers of Spanish and by native and non-native speakers of English. A second objective will be to investigate how situational factors affect the selection of level of directness. In order to collect the data for this study, two versions of a discourse completion test (DCT) have been administered: one in Spanish and the other in English. Two hundred and twenty-five informants participated in this study altogether. All of them were university students. The study reveals that English native speakers are those who most frequently choose the types of categories and strategies which are less threatening to the hearer’s face, whereas Spanish speakers are those who use the most threatening types. In addition, the productions of requests by the group of non-native speakers of English in this respect seem to be influenced by their native language, in this case Spanish. Situational factors have also been shown to have an effect on the choice of category and strategy.