POLITENESS FACTORS IN REQUESTS FORMULATED IN THE “CATEGORY WIDTH” COGNITIVE STYLE

• Authors: Eva Stranovská , Zuzana Fráterová , Daša Munková , Daniela Műglová
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper focuses on analysing speech acts in the process of formulating requests in the ‘category width’ cognitive style in a foreign language and mother tongue. We particularly focus on identifying the relation between politeness factors used by broad, medium broad and narrow categorizers in using speech acts of request in a foreign language and mother tongue. Politeness factors are divided into social factors: attention getters, the listener’s (direct formulation of requests) and speaker’s perspective (indirect formulation of requests) and expressive factors: pre-sequences, post-sequences, mitigating devices and minimizers. Our research was carried out on a sample of university students of English, German and Spanish. It is remarkable that narrow categorizers use politeness factors on a larger scale in foreign language than in their mother tongue and broad categorizers use politeness factors more extensively in their mother tongue. Additional research results are discussed in the present paper.

Keywords

EN

CATEGORY WIDTH; COGNITIVE STYLE; SOCIAL FACTORS; POLITENESS; EXPRESSIVE FACTORS

• Publisher: Institute of Experimental Psychology, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Studia Psychologica
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 54
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 111 – 124

Contributors

author

Eva Stranovská

• Katedra lingvodidaktiky a interkultúrnych štúdií, Pedagogická fakulta UKF Nitra, Dražovská cesta 4, 949 74 Nitra, Slovak Republic

author

Zuzana Fráterová

author

Daša Munková

author

Daniela Műglová