THE USE OF REQUEST STRATEGIES BY SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS IN A GLOBAL COMMUNITY (A MULTICULTURAL SETTING OF A HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION)

The study is about the choice of request strategies used by second language speakers residing in the UK, particularly in a multicultural setting situated in an institution of higher learning in Sheffield. The aim of the study is to examine the choice of request strategies used by second language learners in a multicultural environment in an English speaking country. The objectives of the study are to consider the different strategies used by the second language learners and to also examine the variables that might influence the choice of request strategies used. The variables that have been identified are the social distance, power and dominance, gender and status. The participants of this study were volunteers from the MA of Education programme. The data collection involved two different phases and the first phase was the survey with the use of Discourse Completion (DCT) as the instrument. The second phase of the data collection was a few session follow-up discussion with a few groups of participants who have volunteered during the administration of the survey. The findings of the study have initiated the formulation of the Cooperative Intercultural Pragmatics of Request Strategies Model that has integrated three theories which are the Hofstede’s National Culture Dimension, Blum-Kulka’s Request Strategies (Level of Directness) and Grice’s Maxims of Cooperative Principle. This model was used to justify and rationalise the findings for the third research question that examines the four variables that may have influenced the choice of request strategies used by the participants. The study has also recommended a few future researches that can be carried out as a follow up.