Comparison between Chinese and Japanese Social Media Requests

Abstract

This study investigates Chinese and Japanese requests in social media communication, focusing on the requests made between university students. The data consisted of 300 social media requests made by 30 Chinese university students and 304 social media requests made by 30 Japanese university students, respectively. The findings revealed that the Chinese and Japanese participants displayed more similarities than differences regarding the request strategy that they preferred to use among peers on social media. Both groups employed direct requests the most frequently, followed by conventionally indirect requests. Non-conventionally indirect requests were used the least frequently by both groups. The Japanese participants employed twice as many external modifiers as their Chinese counterparts. In contrast, the Chinese participants used considerably more lexical/phrasal internal modifiers than the Japanese participants. The findings are discussed in relation to factors such as social distance, living arrangements and new technologies.