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 native language. 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 native language. 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 native language and broad categorizers use politeness factors more extensively in their native language. Additional research results are discussed in the present paper.