2。 Literature review

2。1。 Studies on Speech Act Theory

Making requests has been studied in many fields, such as linguistics, sociology and so on。 From the perspective of linguistics, many studies concerning making requests are based on Speech Act Theory。 A speech act in linguistics is an utterance that has performative function in language and communication。 The work How to do Things with Words published in 1962 by Austin marks the founding of this theory。 Austin subsequently comes up with the theory of locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act。 Speech acts are commonly taken to include acts such as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating (Dai & He 2013, p。82)。 Later, Searle (1976) makes a classification of illocutionary act。 He develops the speech act theory and makes a classification of the illocutionary act into five general types, which are respectively representatives, directives, commissives, expressives and declaration。 He puts requests speech act into the category of directives。 Based on Searle’s classification, Dirven & Verspoor (1998) classify the speech act into three categories。 Informative speech act, such as assertion and statement; obligative speech act, such as request and promise; constitutive speech acts including apology and praise。 In their classification, the request speech act is included in the obligative speech act。 Some other scholars such as Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper also make a great contribution to the pragmatic study of making requests。 All these works and studies not only give us an overall view towards the request speech act but also pave the way for further t study from the aspects of linguistics。文献综述

2。2。 Theories about the request strategy

Ervin-Tripp (1976) classifies the request strategies into six categories: first, need or desire statement。 This kind of request strategy is mainly used by the superiors to the subordinate, it happens mainly in workplace and family environment。 For example, when boss ask the secretary to type something, he may use the sentence: “I need you to type the report for me now。”; second, imperatives。 This kind of request mode is often used among family members, especially from superior to subordinate or in equal interpersonal relationship。 For example, when parents ask their children to answer the phone, they usually say: “Jim, answer the telephone please。”; third, embedded imperatives。 Ervin-Tripp thinks when the request is hard for the hearer to perform or when the speaker acts as the beneficiary after making the request, embedded imperatives will be taken by the speaker as the request strategy。 For example, “Could you lend me some money?”; fourth, permissive directives。 The frequency of using this kind of request is low, this usually happens when the lower status person makes a request to the higher status person; fifth, non-explicit question directives。 The request sentences usually appear in the interrogative sentence pattern; sixth, hints。 This kind of request strategy is the most indirect strategy that the speaker adopts。 The speaker does not point out what he means directly。 Instead, he provides the hearer with a hint which leaves him with sufficient room to think about the hidden meaning。 About the sentence structure, it usually appears in declarative sentence patterns instead of interrogative sentence patterns。

Besides Ervin-Tripp’s theory, there are also some other theories which look into the request strategy from the aspect of the directness。 Blum-Kulka, House& Kasper (1989) propose three request strategies in their CCSARP(Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns) according to the degree of directness, they are respectively direct strategy, conventionally indirect strategy and unconventionally indirect strategy which can be distinguished into nine sub-categories。 

He Wenting (2012) proposes that the direct strategy marks explicitly as request which plays an important part in performing requests。 Mood-derivable, performatives, hedged performatives together with obligation statements are included in Blum-Kulka’s sub-category of direct strategies。 When the speaker chooses the direct strategy, his or her intention is expressed clearly which can provide the hearer with sufficient information。 Usually, the sentence structure of direct strategy is declarative and imperative。