Abstract:

The multi-faceted nature of requestive speech acts turns their learning by students of English as an L2 into a difficult task (Fujimori 2004, Houck & Tatsuki 2010). Additionally, speech acts are often taught unsystematically, by asking students to memorize a limited number of conventional formulae which are often unmotivated as to their pragmatic use in L2. In most cases, no attention is given to the specific differences in use between L1 and L2 as regards the production of requests. This paper argues in favor of a Lexical-Constructional (Pérez-Hernández y Ruiz de Mendoza, 2011) approach to the teaching of requests in English. The present proposal makes use of the theoretical notions of Idealized Cognitive Model (ICM, Lakoff 1987), in order to account for the semantics of requests, and of (multiple sources)-in-target metonymies (Pérez-Hernández, 2013), in order to provide an explanation of the kaleidoscopic nature of requestive illocutions. The metonymic activation of a variable number of the semantic attributes of the requestive ICM, by means of the relevant linguistics realization procedures, allows speakers to build up an inventory of formal realizations with varying degrees of explicitness and pragmatic adjustment to the communicative needs of the speaker in different contexts. As opposed to the traditional teaching of a limited number of fixed linguistic formulae (e.g. use of the adverb “please” plus an imperative sentence, interrogative sentences of the “Can/could you…?” type, expressions like “Would you mind…?, etc.), this paper offers an explicit instruction methodology for the teaching of requests to students of English as an L2 which includes the explicit teaching of (1) the semantic/pragmatic attributes of the request ICM, and (2) the teaching of the linguistic realizations procedures associated with each one of the latter. The aim is to endow students with the necessary conceptual and linguistic tools to build their requestive speech acts in a manner flexible enough to adapt to the context of use and to their communicative needs.

References:
[1] Fujimori, J. (2004). Practical Criteria for Teaching Speech Acts. Tokyo: JALT Publications.
[2] Houck, N. R., & Tatsuki, D. H. (Eds.). (2010). Pragmatics: Teaching speech acts. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
[3] Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. Chicago: CUP.
[4] Pérez-Hernández, L. & F.J. Ruiz de Mendoza (2011). “A Lexical-Constructional Model Account of Illocution.” Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8: 98-137.
[5] Pérez-Hernández, L. (2013). “Illocutionary constructions: (multiple source)-in-target metonymies, illocutionary ICMs, and specification links.” Language & Communication, 33(2):128–149.

Keywords:

Requests, Lexical-Constructional Model, explicit instruction, illocutionary constructions, constructional grammar.