A study of the language of requests made on the telephone by native English speakers, Japanese speakers, and Japanese ESL speakers

In this study, the language of requests made on the telephone by native English speakers, Japanese speakers, and Japanese ESL speakers was compared and analyzed in two tasks. Each group consisted of 20 subjects who were involved in an oral role play to elicit conversational data. Politeness, influence of situational variables on language use, and pragmatic transfer were analyzed in openings, requests, thankings, and closings. Japanese ESL speakers preferred to use preparatory expressions such as, "Could (Would) you ...?" or direct expressions such as, "I want you to ...?", while native English speakers tended to use more indirect expressions such as, "I was wondering or, "I'm hoping that you would...". Japanese ESL speakers also transferred their LI sensitivity to social status variables to their L2 usage. They did not use greetings such as, "Hi", "How are you?", or enthusiastic expressions such as, "Great" and "Wonderful", which were preferred by native English speakers. Pragmatic transfer was analyzed in their interlanguage. Finally, implications for teaching English for communication were presented.Education, Faculty ofLanguage and Literacy Education (LLED), Department ofGraduat