Evaluating while justifying intercultural requests

Abstract

Research into the speech-act request performed by people of different cultures operationalized at levels including nation, community of practice, and L2 speakers has identified and discussed sets of culture-related request-making behaviors. The findings of this research suggest that differences exist among cultures in request-making behaviors concerning the use and choice of request directness and strategies, rhetorical approaches, and internal and external modifications. The present study, with an intercultural orientation, focused on an external request modification element -grounder, an element that can function to build solidarity while justifying the request. The lexicogrammar used by both Chinese and non-Chinese professionals in textualizing the grounders accompanying their intercultural English requests made via email was analyzed using Appraisal Theory. The use of evaluative language in intercultural request grounders was then compared with that in intracultural ones. The findings indicate that while both Chinese and non-Chinese professionals demonstrated positive accommodative evaluative behavior in the construction of the discourse of intercultural request grounders, the non-Chinese professionals showed a stronger willingness to accommodate than the Chinese professionals. Possible reasons for the accommodation behavior demonstrated by the professionals of the two different cultures were offered and discussed.

The Pragmatic Strategies Adopted by an Advanced Chinese EFL Learner in Realization of Request Speech Act—A Case Study

“…There are a large number of studies on the speech act of request (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain's, 1984; Taguchi, 2007; Al- Gahtani & Roever, 2012;Han, 2013;Langer, 2013;Ho, 2014). Moreover, their study focuses vary from various pragmatic strategies used to realize the request to different individual's specific strategy use.…”

Achieving service recovery through responding to negative online reviews

“…Another genre that has also gained considerable research attention is the business genre (e.g. Ho, 2014; Vergaro, 2004; Yeung, 2007). The promotional genre and its ‘colonies’ (Bhatia, 2004: 57) have also been researched extensively (e.g.…”

“…Unquestionably, research has also demonstrated how professionals achieved their various communicative purposes with genres in their workplace. For example, teachers, business personnel and computer programmers could get their professional colleagues to perform an act with request e-mails (Ho, 2011, 2014), marketing professionals could persuade potential customers to purchase a product or a service with sales promotion letters (Vergaro, 2004) and academics could disseminate research findings and establish academic credentials with research articles (Lin and Evans, 2012).…”

Guarding the gate politically and politely: How accreditation teams do facework while gatekeeping

“…Outside of the academic community, it has also been demonstrated that evaluative language can be a resource for professionals to do face work while performing the face-threatening speech act request. In his study of the discourse of request emails in an intra-cultural context (Ho 2014a) and an inter-cultural context (Ho 2014b), it has been shown that while Chinese and non-Chinese professionals justify their requests, they also use evaluative language in an attempt to mitigate the face-threat caused by their act of requesting. Following Ho (2014a), I will draw upon Martin and White's (2005) appraisal theory as the analytical framework.…”