โครงสร้างและกลวิธีการขอร้องในภาษาไทยและภาษาอังกฤษแบบอเมริกัน : การศึกษาวัจนปฏิบัติศาสตร์เปรียบต่าง / ปิยะวัลย์ วิรุฬหชัยพงษ์ = Structures and strategies of requests in Thai and American English : a contrastive pragmatic study / Piyawan Wiroonhachaipong
This study aims at investigating the structures and the strategies of requests in Thai comparing to those in American English, and the relationship between the structures and the strategies, and the relative social status of the interlocutors. The data on which the analyses are based are collected from 50 Thai speakers and 50 American speakers, using Discourse Completion Test. It is found that there are 5 structures in Thai, namely Head Act only, Head Act + Supportive Moves, Supportive Moves + Head Act, Supportive Moves + Head Act + Supportive Moves, and Supportive Moves only. The structure with highest frequency in Thai is the use of Supportive Moves + Head Act + Supportive Moves. In American English 4 structures are found. The structure of Supportive Moves only which is found in Thai is not found in American English. The structure with highest frequency uses in American English is Head Act only. From the 450 requests in each languages there are 1,094 Supportive Moves in Thai compared to 488 Supportive Moves found in American English. This finding reflects that Thai speakers give more emphasis is the addressees faces more than American speakers do. According to request strategies, it is found that the request strategies used by Thai and American speakers can be divided into 3 main strategies; direct strategies, conventionally indirect strategies and unconventionally indirect strategies. Thai speakers use unconventionally indirect strategies with highest frequency, whereas, American speakers use both conventionally indirect strategies and unconventionally indirect strategies with high frequency. Furthermore, it is found that the social status between the addresser and the addressee plays an important role in the variation of the structures and strategies used in requests in Thai. For example, when the addresser is higher status than the addressee, Thai speakers tend to use the structure with Head Act + Supportive Moves in a large quantity Thai speakers also use the structure with Supportive Moves only when requesting people with higher status. This type of structure is not used in American at all.
