A Contrastive Study of Chinese and British English Request Strategies Based on Open Role-play

Abstract

—This study investigates the similarities and differences in request strategies used by native speakers of British English and Mandarin Chinese. The method of a non-prescriptive open role-play is used as the instrument of data collection. After the analysis of the data is conducted, the findings of the study is presented and discussed, including the realization of three main requests strategies. Besides, this paper also focuses on how request strategies interact with the two social variables of power and distance.