A comparative study of requests in heritage speaker Spanish, L1 Spanish, and L1 English

Abstract

Although requests are the most widely studied speech act, there has not been extensive research on the requests produced by heritage speakers of Spanish in the United States. This study compares the requests of three groups: Spanish heritage speakers, Mexican native speakers of Spanish, and native speakers of English. The first research question examines the level of directness of the requests combined with the frequency of downgraders. The following two research questions analyzed separately the level of directness of the head act and frequency of downgrading mechanisms. Differences between the two L1 groups are found to be statistically significant for all three of the categories investigated. In contrast, the heritage speakers differ significantly from their Mexican monolingual counterparts in the level of directness of the head act, producing Spanish requests more in line with the tendency in English to employ indirect strategies. Although the heritage speakers differ from the L1 Spanish group on this one dimension, the fact that they share other characteristics with both L1 groups suggests the existence of a unique intercultural style. The findings of this study also indicate that heritage speakers display many of the same characteristics as L2 learners reported in previous research.

Indirectness in English Requests among Malay University Students

“…Kasper & Dahl (1992) highlight that the DCT combined with role play can function as one of the most important data collection instruments in pragmatic research. Pinto (2007) mentioned that this fact was proven by the number of researchers who used DCT in their cross linguistic studies related to non-native and native production of speech acts such as Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz (1990);Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper (1989a); Blum-Kulka, & Olshtain (1984, 1986Olshtain, & Weinback (1987) & Trenchs (1995.…”

“…As stated by Pinto & Raschio (2007), "this wealth of research is largely due to the fact that requests entail the speaker (S) imposing on the hearer (H) by requesting that a certain action be carried out for S's benefit. Given this element of imposition, a successful request requires some degree of linguistic tact that often varies across languages, thus the transfer of strategies from one language to another may result in inappropriate or nonconventional speech" (p. 135).…”

“…Lisa M. Nurani (2009) exposed that DCT has specific drawbacks that influenced the instrument's reliability in gathering appropriate data. Nevertheless, Pinto (2007) advocated that eliciting data with a written questionnaire or instrument such as DCT has certain advantages for this type of study.…”

Emergent communicative norms in a contact language: Indirect requests in heritage Russian

“…However, without a broader and more detailed study of the HS requests in comparison to monolinguals, the role of the dominant language in HL pragmatics cannot be understood. After Pinto and Raschio (2007), our study presents one of the first investigations of HL speech acts to date.…”

“…One study that does address speech act pragmatics in a HL -Pinto and Raschio (2007) -reveals interesting patterns of competence that exhibit signs of crosslinguistic interference, and demonstrates the need for further inquiry. Pinto and Raschio (2007) investigate requests made by adult HSs of Spanish in comparison to two groups of monolingual NSs -English and Spanish (Mexican). The most significant finding of the study is that HSs avoided using direct imperatives, resembling monolingual English NSs (who never used them) and contrasting with monolingual Spanish NSs (who used them 15 % of the time).…”