Polite Request Strategies as Produced by Yemeni EFL Learners.

This is a socio-pragmatic investigation into polite request strategies made by Yemeni learners of English as a foreign language. For this study, 196 Yemeni learners of English were asked to respond in English to six different situations in which they carried out the speech act of request. The data was collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The data was analyzed according to the models proposed by Blum-Kulka, et al (1989). Blum-Kulka, et al's (1989) analytical framework classified request into three levels of directness: direct strategies, conventionally indirect strategies, and non-conventionally indirect strategies. Five strategies are considered direct (mood derivable, performative, obligation statement, want statement), two strategies are considered conventionally indirect (query preparatory, suggestory formulae), and two strategies are non-conventionally indirect strategies (strong hints and mild hints). Results indicate that the Yemeni EFL students prefer to use conventionally indirect strategies more than other strategies when the social distance, social power and ranking of imposition are very high between the requester and requestee. On the other hand, they would choose to use direct strategies when the speaker and hearer have equal status and when the speaker has a higher status than the hearer to show solidarity between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]