Request Behavior and Communicative Styles in Peninsular Spanish and American English: A Comparison

This article presents an analysis of the request behavior of American English and Peninsular Spanish speakers. In line with previous research, the study shows that both populations behave similarly in that they privilege conventional indirectness and, especially, ability queries, over any other options. Our analysis of the distribution of all substrategies, however, points to overall different communicative styles on the part of the two groups. --author-supplied descriptio