A Developmental Study of Polite Registers in School-age Children''s Request

• Main Authors: Hui-chen Hsiao (Sabrina), 蕭惠貞
• Other Authors: Joseph H. Hsu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/91593747363042704083

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 語言學研究所 === 87 === ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate how school-age children use polite request strategies in relation to different addressees, with an aim at illuminating the importance of communicative competence during children''s socialization. Two aspects under communicative competence are examined: first, children''s request styles, and second, polite strategies. These two aspects are all related to children''s ability of language adaptation. We will see whether children will adjust the extent of politeness in requesting. I use two methods, Questionnaire and Interview, to collect data. Chi-square test was applied to test children''s requests. The results are summarized as follows: (1) Around age nine, older children are more flexible in using request strategies. They are more sensitive to social differences of the hearers and thus vary their request styles. (2) As children grow older, their uses of polite registers in requests increase, such as Indirect Request, Polite Formula, Lexical Modifier, and Supportives. (3) Status and Familiarity variables both affect children''s choices of Direct Request and Indirect Request strategies in groups II and III. (4) Girls of age 9 tend to use more polite strategies than boys with regard to the use of Xie-Xie, Appealer, Apology formula, and grounder. (5) Children''s use of Qing decreases with age. Older children''s use of Qing is more sensitive to the social variables Status and Familiarity. The results of the study can enable us to have a better understanding about how school-age children socialized to use the requests in a socially way. Meanwhile, it suggests that parents'' role and environmental factors play an important role in the process of children''s socialization and development of sociolinguistic competence.