英語學習者使用請求行為修飾詞之研究： 「語用語言學」及「社交語用學」面向

EFL Learners’ Use of Modifications in Making Requests: Pragmalinguistic and Sociopragmatic Perspectives

語用知識決定了言談者是否有恰當應對的能力，其反映在語言學習者能否使用目標 語言進行有效的溝通。「請求」為威脅面子的言語行為之一，此語言行為在外語及第二語 言教育領域中被廣泛地研究；然而，以往文獻多半著重在語言學習者於「請求」行為或 使用相關策略之表現，而相對地較少進一步調查其面對不同社交情境所持有之感想及考 量。針對此文獻較不足之處，本研究收錄英語為外國語言之學習者為受試者，以調查他 們面對不同社會階級的對話者時，在英語「請求」中使用修飾詞句的語用語言能力。本 研究更深入調查這些語言學習者之社交語用能力的表現，將研究重點更延伸至學習者如 何反思及探討自己的「請求」行為。 本研究受試者為四十八位就讀於台灣中部某私立大學的大一學生；研究工具包括「問 答型言談填充題」及「選擇型言談填充題」兩部分，前項工具主要檢視受試者對於英語 修飾詞句之應用能力，而後項工具則是檢視受試者對於「請求」之言談表達的判斷傾向。 此外，本研究更進一步安排二十四位自願參與追蹤訪談的受試者，以了解他們對於「請 求」行為所持有的態度及想法。研究結果顯示這些受試者通常使用 Grounders 支持自己 的請求行為，只有少數使用了少量的英文內部修飾詞句，顯示了受試者普遍有限的「語 用語言能力」。而「社交語用能力」則呈現在受試者對於談話者之社會階級、社會距離及 請求之負擔程度的察覺。即便如此，受試者在面對不同的社交情境時只表現了略微的行 為差異，他們認為在面對不同階級之對話者，皆頇以較不直接且禮貌的方式來陳述其「請 求」行為。最後，針對主要研究結果及限制，本研究探討相關英語課程規劃及建議未來 研究設計之方向。

Language learners’ pragmatic competence determines the extent to which they communicate appropriately in target languages. As one of the face-threatening speech acts, requests have been widely investigated by pragmatic researchers in the foreign or second language education field. Yet, previous studies mainly focused on language learners’ request behaviors or strategies, and comparatively less investigations examined learners’ perception when making requests in varied scenarios. To fill the literature gap, this study investigated EFL learners’ pragmalinguistic performance of using modifications when making requests to interlocutors with different social statuses. It further depicted these learners’ sociopragmatic performance by exploring how they perceived and elaborated on their speech act behaviors. The participants were 48 freshmen recruited from a private university in central Taiwan. Data collected included a Written Discourse Completion Task and a Multiple-choice Discourse Completion Task. The former examined learners’ use of modifications, while the latter documented participants’ judgments on the appropriateness of request utterances. Additionally, an individual follow-up interview was conducted with 24 voluntary participants to uncover their perception towards particular request utterances in social settings. The findings suggested that these participants frequently employed Grounders to support their utterances, while they produced few internal modifications due to limited pragmalinguistic knowledge. It also revealed that the participants had limited lexical knowledge to execute modification usage because only a few forms were produced to present particular modifications. Little situational differences were found in the participants’ sociopragmatic performance, although their awareness of social relationship, social distance and degree of imposition were somewhat revealed. They strongly perceived that request utterances should be produced in an indirect and polite manner. Pedagogical implications and research suggestions are provided based on the findings and limitations of this study