(From Issue 9)
How the perception of politeness can influence the choice of request strategies
1. Introduction
Speech act theory argues that when one says something, they are not only describing the world around them but also acting within it. Since words are used to perform certain acts as well as give information, influencing or altering the listener’s psychological state and actions to some extent, a speaker needs to give careful attention to how to put what he or she has to say into words to build and keep a good relationship with the listener. While speech acts are all staples of everyday life, one of the speech acts that requires the most consideration for the way to express it is a request. A request is a directive speech act, which is made to get the person hearing it to do something for the speaker’s sake. Since a request itself imposes some imposition on the listener (Xiaoning, 2017, p. 1), it requires a speaker to mitigate the face-threatening force of the request by taking advantage of a variety of strategies so that it won’t affect the relationship between the requester and the requestee (Hayashi, 2016, p.63). Though many would agree that they need to be polite when they make a request, it seems like the types of request strategies they take to show politeness can differ across languages and cultures, which can cause some problems in cross-cultural communication because intended politeness may not be expressed properly in other languages. Indeed, the Japanese are likely to hold on to the same perception that negatively worded requests are more polite even when they make a request to Americans, who tend to prefer positive politeness (Kitao, 1990, p. 181). In order to figure out how one’s perception of politeness can influence request strategies they employ in a second language, this paper deals with one of the strategies that Japanese people often employ, apologies, and investigates any similarities and differences between Japanese and Japanese learners’ English, particularly in terms of 1) frequency of apologies as a means of request strategies, 2) contexts in which they make apologies, and 3) reasons for apologies. The first section presents an explanation of different types of request strategies, mainly focusing on how apologies are utilized in requests. The following section explores how Japanese learners of English apologize when they request something in English in comparison with the way Japanese speakers make a request in their own language. This comparison suggests the possibility of pragmatic transfer, and in this regard, expressions of apology in real-life emails and texts are analyzed in the final section.
- Apologies in requests
A request is a directive speech act that is innately face-threatening for both a requestee and a requester. The requester may threaten the requestee’s negative face by intervening with the requestee’s freedom of action. The requester may lose face as his or her wishes can be rejected by the requestee (Xiaoning, 2017, p. 1-2). Therefore, making a request requires consideration for relational distance, including social distance and power balance between the requester and the requestee, and a rank of imposition to achieve the request while maintaining a good relationship (Hayashi, 2016, p. 63). Requests can be made less face-threatening or increase their compelling force by changing the level of directness of the head act, which is the actual request that the requester wants the requestee to realize, and by adding modifications, which modify the head act internally or externally (Konakahara, 2011, p. 245).
Apologies belong to external modifications and are used as a kind of negotiation strategy in requests. The Japanese, who prefer to respect others’ negative faces by keeping their distance through modesty and humbleness, see apologies as necessary to achieve their requests. In Japanese society, which can be classified as a negative politeness culture according to Brown and Levinson, apologies play an important role in requests. By apologizing, a requester can convey a good impression to a requestee, which makes him or her more willing to treat the requester nicely and realize his or her wish (Kumagaya, 2013, p. 30). In other words, apologies cause the requestee pleasure and guilt simultaneously, and those mixed feelings allow the requester to succeed in making requests. This indicates that Japanese people would not hesitate to lose their positive face by humbling themselves if it helped them realize their wishes in exchange for apologies.
- Previous studies: How Japanese people apologize when they make a request
Many studies have been conducted to figure out the features of request strategies that Japanese people employ in comparison with those from different cultures.
Hayashi (2016) had Japanese and Chinese speakers complete a discourse completion task (DCT) and interviewed them to see how they would make a request under specific circumstances. The DCT contained four situations with different power relationships and solidarity between interlocutors: 1) Asking a parent/ a close friend to pick up at the station, 2) Borrowing a cellphone from a close senior/ a close junior/ a close friend/ a not-so-close friend, 3) Asking a close senior/ a close junior/ a close friend/ a not-so-close friend to give back a book that you lent a month before, 4) Asking a close professor/ a not-so-close professor/ a close friend/ a not-so-close friend to change the date for a meeting on the day. Hayashi focused on expressive functions and compared Japanese speakers with Chinese speakers in terms of the frequency of each expressive function. The results showed a striking difference between Japanese speakers and Chinese speakers in terms of to whom and how often they would make an apology. While Chinese speakers tended to apologize to those in a higher position when they made a high-imposition request (situation 4), Japanese speakers were likely to apologize in any situation. Especially when they made a high-imposition request, almost all the Japanese participants apologized regardless of the relational distance (power balance and solidarity) between interlocutors. Given Japanese speakers’ frequent use of apologies in every situation, Hayashi has concluded that, while Japanese speakers and Chinese speakers pay more respect when making a high-imposition request, Japanese speakers apologize more frequently than Chinese speakers, preferring negative politeness strategies. For the reason behind Japanese people’s frequent use of apologies, Sekiguchi argues that they show politeness by using expressions of apology, acknowledging that they cause the requestee trouble (2007). In other words, expressions of apology are employed to show respect and politeness as one of the negative request strategies, which minimizes the trouble that a request will possibly cause the requestee.
Interestingly enough, the Japanese tend to apologize regardless of what language they speak. Konakahara (2011) investigated how Japanese learners of English would perform request strategies in comparison with British English speakers and Japanese speakers speaking Japanese and collected data via the discourse completion test, which contained four situations with different power relationships between interlocutors and a rank of imposition of a request. Konakahara’s study revealed that both Japanese learners of English and Japanese speakers speaking Japanese tended to depend on external modifications, especially grounders and apologies, as their use of internal modifications was very limited because of the different politeness encoding systems in Japanese and English. Both Japanese people and British people used grounders equally frequently; however, there was a significant difference in the frequency of apologies between them. Japanese speakers speaking Japanese were more than twice as likely to apologize as British English speakers. Though their frequency was not as high as Japanese speakers speaking Japanese, Japanese learners of English still apologized one and a half times as frequently as British English speakers. Given Konakahara’s study, it can be reasonably assumed that the perception of politeness can influence the types of request strategies, which can lead to pragmatic transfer. Since Japanese people have a consensus that apologies are important to show politeness and respect, they may keep the same view when they request something in a different language, which results in the frequent use of apologies, even in English.
- Method
The purpose of this study is to investigate how the perception of politeness can impact strategy types in requests, focusing on one of the external modifications: apologies. I collected six different context samples from my emails and LINE texts, where I made a high-imposition request. I analyzed and compared expressions of apology in English with those in Japanese, particularly to see where pragmatic transfer occurs. The situations analyzed include 1) asking a friend of mine to participate in my research study (equal status, close, in Japanese), 2) asking a professor to change the date for the meeting (requestee dominant, close, in Japanese), 3) asking a manager to cancel the shift at work (requestee dominant, not close, in Japanese), 4) asking a participant in my research project to answer an additional questionnaire (equal status, not close, in English), 5) asking a professor to change the format of the meeting (requestee dominant, close, in English), and 6) asking a researcher to change the date and the format of the meeting (requestee dominant, not close, in English)
- Results and Discussion
This section shows qualitatively analyzed results, revealing the detailed characteristics of expressions of apology in each context. The results are analyzed in terms of frequency and reasons for apologies in Japanese and English to figure out any similarities and differences between them and explore the possibility of pragmatic transfer.
- Frequency of apologies
Table 1 shows how many times I apologized when I made a request in each situation. As is obvious from the table, while I apologized in Japanese in all three situations, I did not apologize at all in English except in situation 6, where I made a request to someone higher in status who was not close to me. As for requests in Japanese, I apologized most often in situation 3, out of the three situations where I asked a not-so-close manager to cancel the shift. This indicates that I am more likely to apologize to those higher in rank who are not close to me. When requesting something in English, I found that I tended to employ other internal and external modifications instead of apologies to reduce the face-threatening force of a request. Internal modifications that I used in situations 4 through 6 include openers (e.g., do you think, I’m afraid, unfortunately), softeners (e.g., kindly, a little bit), and modality (e.g., would, could, might). External modifications appeared there, such as disarmers (e.g., I know it’s a little bit hard) and imposition minimizers (e.g., I hope it will work for you); thanks.
Another striking feature of Japanese requests is found in the requests in situations 2 and 3. In Japanese, apologies can be expressed not necessarily through conventional expressions like 申し訳ございません ‘I’m sorry’ or performatives like お詫びいたします ‘I apologize.’ In addition to those conventional expressions, Japanese requests often end with お手数おかけしますが、どうぞよろしくお願いいたします ‘I know this will cause you trouble, but I hope you will realize this request’ and this kind of expression was seen in situations 2 and 3, where I made a request to someone higher in rank. This expression is not an explicit apology, but the お手数おかけします part acknowledges the trouble caused to the requestee. Being aware of the face-threatening act and expressing such a concern is considered polite in Japan, and therefore, it is included in apologies in this paper. While I tended to end a request rather negatively by apologizing once again or acknowledging the trouble when I asked for something in Japanese, positive closings such as ‘thank you’ and ‘I hope it works’ were frequently seen in the requests in English. This indicates that, in Japanese, apologies are often made to make requests less face-threatening. In contrast, different modifications, including positive strategies such as thank and imposition minimizers, are likely to be employed in English for the same reason.
Table 1 Frequency of and reasons for the apology
| Situation 1 (ES, C, in J) | Situation 2 (RD, C, in J) | Situation 3 (RD, nC, in J) | Situation 4 (ES, nC, in E) | Situation 5 (RD, C, in E) | Situation 6 (RD, nC, in E) | |
| Times of apology | 1 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Note: ES for equal status, RD for Requestee dominant, C for close, nC for not close, J for Japanese, E for English
- Reasons for apologies
Table 2 shows reasons why I made an apology in each situation. I apologized for ⅰ) bothering the requestee (e.g., お忙しいところ申し訳ございません ‘I’m sorry to bother you’ (from situation 3)), ⅱ) causing trouble to the requestee (e.g., 無理なお願いしちゃってごめんね ‘I’m sorry I asked so much of you (from situation 1)/ご迷惑おかけし申し訳ございません, 大変恐縮ですが ‘I apologize for causing you trouble’ (from situations 2 and 3)). I apologized for causing the requestee trouble, most often once in situations 1 and 6, twice in situation 2, and three times in situation 3. In other words, when I make a request, I never fail to apologize for this reason, regardless of which language I use. In contrast, reason ⅰ, bothering the requestee, appeared only in situation 3. This is presumably because it was only in situation 3 that I started the conversation, which required an apology as an attention-getter. The other cases, however, are all replies, and an apology for bothering the requestee as an attention-getter might not have been necessary there, unlike situation 3.
Table 2 Reasons for apologies
| Situation 1 (ES, C, in J) | Situation 2 (RD, C, in J) | Situation 3 (RD, nC, in J) | Situation 4 (ES, nC, in E) | Situation 5 (RD, C, in E) | Situation 6 (RD, nC, in E) | |
| Reason for apology | ⅱ | ⅱ, ⅱ | ⅰ, ⅱ, ⅱ, ⅱ | ⅱ |
From the results that I got from this analysis, it is hard to say that pragmatic transfer has occurred, at least in terms of how to employ apologies in the requests. This may be because I have learned English for approximately ten years with a one-year stay in the United States and have been exposed to a wide variety of request strategies along the way. With long learning experience and exposure to real-life English, I have learned to employ various types of modifications and do not need to depend on apologies anymore, unlike when I request something in Japanese. In other words, ten years of learning experience and exposure to real-life English might have removed the conventional perception that apologies are necessary to show politeness in requests and have set a different mind for requests in English. This indicates that the period of learning English and with or without experience of staying in English-speaking countries for a certain period can influence the choice of request strategies.
- Conclusion
This paper has revealed how apologies are made as a means of politeness strategy in requests across languages. By comparing requests in Japanese and English as a second language, it is found that one is more likely to apologize when they make a request in Japanese than they do in English, with the frequency getting higher according to solidarity and power balance. The reason for apologies is very likely the same across the languages, which is the trouble the speaker causes to requestee. While apologies frequently appear in requests in Japanese, other types of internal and external modifications are most likely employed in requests in English to mitigate the face-threatening force. Whether one can utilize different types of modifications instead of relying on apologies may depend on the period of the learning experience of English and with or without experience of staying in English-speaking countries. If one has learned English long enough and had exposure to a variety of modifications native speakers tend to use, they can learn to use different types of request strategies.
This study has a couple of limitations. One is the participant. Since I collected and analyzed my own emails and texts, it is hard to see the tendency or generalize the results. The number of participants should increase to get more reliable and generalizable results of variations. Another limitation is the situation of requests. Since I collected the actual requests from my emails and texts and I failed to find where I made a request to those in a lower position, the situations are very limited. Therefore, it may be dangerous to conclude that Japanese people apologize in any situation regardless of the power balance between interlocutors.
Though this study fails to see pragmatic transfer in terms of apologies, it leaves the possibility that pragmatic transfer occurs in those who do not have much experience in learning practical English. For further study, one’s English proficiency and the experience of staying in English-speaking countries should be examined to explore when pragmatic transfer most likely occurs. It will help carry out a much closer analysis of cross-language and interlanguage variations.
References
Hayashi, K. (2016). Request strategies in Japanese and Chinese. Bulletin of Kobe Shinwa Women’s University Graduate School of Literature, 12, 63-80.
Kitao, K. (1990). A study of Japanese and American perceptions of politeness in requests. Doshisha studies in English, 50, 178-210.
Konakahara, M. (2011). Requests in Japanese learners’ English in comparison with British English and Japanese. The bulletin of the Graduate School of Education of Waseda University, 18, 244-260.
Kumagaya, T. (2013). Facework in Japanese “apologies”: contrastive analysis of speech acts. Annals of the Institute for Comparative Studies of Culture of Tokyo Woman’s Christian University, 74, 21-36.
Nordquist, Richard. (2020, January 24). Speech act theory. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/speech-act-theory-1691986
Sekiguchi, G. (2007). A study of request expressions in Japanese. The Bulletin of Lunghwa University of Science and Technology, 23, 1-15.
Xiaoning, Z. (2017). Politeness strategies in requests and refusals. [master’s thesis, Nanjing University]. Semantics Archives.
Xiaoning, Z. (2017). Politeness strategies in requests and refusals. [master’s thesis, Nanjing University]. Semantics Archives.
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