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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

TRẦN THỊ PHƯƠNG LINH A STUDY ON POLITENESS STRATEGIES
IN REQUESTS BY THE CHARACTERS IN
THE NOVEL “TWILIGHT” BY
STEPHENIE MEYER

(Nghiên cứu chiến lược lịch sự trong lời thỉnh cầu
của các nhân vật trong tiểu thuyết “Chạng vạng”
của Stephenie Meyer)
MA MINOR THESIS
Field: English Linguistics

THE NOVEL “TWILIGHT” BY
STEPHENIE MEYER (Nghiên cứu chiến lược lịch sự trong lời thỉnh cầu
của các nhân vật trong tiểu thuyết “Chạng vạng”
của Stephenie Meyer) MA MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60.22.15
Hanoi- 2012 v

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration ………………………………………………………… ….……
i
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………….
ii

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………
5
1.1. The speech act theory…………………………………………….…
5
1.1.1. Speech acts…………………………………… ………….…
5
1.1.2. The speech act of request……………………………………….
6
1.2. Politeness………………………………… …………………….…
8
1.2.1. Politeness theory…………………………………………….….
8
1.2.2. Social variables affecting politeness…………………………….
10
1.2.3. Politeness and indirectness. …………………………………….
10
1.2.4. Politeness and indirectness in requests………………………….
11
1.2.5. Modification…………………………………………… ….…
14
1.3. Previous studies on requests…………………………………….…
14
vi

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY…………………………………………
16
2.1. Research questions. ……………………………………………….…
16
2.2. Data collection ………………………………………………….……
16

3.2. Politeness strategies in request by the characters in “Twilight”…………
23
3.2.1. The utilization of strategies …… ……………………………………
23
3.2.2 The utilization of internal and external modifications…………… ……
28
3.3.3 Politeness strategies in requests in “Twilight”, seen from S-H
relationships………………………………………………………………….
31
PART C: CONCLUSION…………………………… …………….………
40
1. Major findings and concluding remarks………………………………….
40
2. Implications …………….………………………………………………
41
3. Suggestions for further study………………………………….……….…
42
REFERENCES……………………………………… …………….………
43 vii

APPENDIX A: The coding system………………………………… ………
I
APPENDIX B: Sample of the coding procedure…………………….……….
II
APPENDIX C: The use of internal modifications by types in “Twilight”
IV
APPENDIX D: The polite request strategies in each group of speakers in

: Number of Appearance
DR
: Direct (Strategy)
CI
: Conventionally Indirect (Strategy)
NCI
: Non- Conventionally Indirect (Strategy)
SD
: Syntactic Downgrader
LPD
: Lexical/Phrasal Downdgrader
UD
: Upgrader
: ix LIST OF TABLES Page
Table 1:
The balance of direct, conventionally indirect, and non-
conventionally indirect polite request strategies in “Twilight”
24
Table 2:
Polite request strategies by types in “Twilight”
25

conventionally indirect polite request strategies in “Twilight”
VII
Figure 2:
Polite request strategies by types in “Twilight”
25
Figure 3:
The use of internal modifications in “Twilight”
29
Figure 4:
The use of external modifications in “Twilight”
VII
Figure 5:
The use of direct, conventionally indirect, and non-
conventionally indirect strategies in requests in “Twilight” seen
from the characters‟ parameters
32
Figure 6:
The use of internal modification in “Twilight” seen from S-H
relationship
VII
xi ABSTRACT
The speech act of request is a face-threatening act in human‟s communication because
it challenges the mutual face of both the speaker and the hearer. The current study aims
to uncover how politeness strategies in requests are employed in the novel “Twilight” by
Stephenie Meyer. All the requests carrying the illocutionary force of getting somebody to
do something serve as the data source. The coding system is based on Blum-Kulka et. al
(1989) and Trosborg (1995)‟s coding manual. The findings show that the characters in

global development. In line with this, the teaching and learning of English in
Vietnam has witnessed a great effort in improving learners‟ communicative
competence. More attention has been paid to oral skills and practice which stress on
the pragmatic meanings of utterances in contexts. Nevertheless, the traditional ways
of teaching and learning, which mainly focused on the development of linguistic
competence seem to hold its position as the prominent method. This leads to the
fact that Vietnamese learners appear to fail to communicate naturally and
appropriately in English. These learners may possess relatively good linguistic
knowledge to understand the structures and the words literally, but they fail to
achieve communicative goals because they may not be aware of the hidden or
unsaid meanings of utterances under certain settings, and lack social
appropriateness and linguisticrealization rulesfor performing and
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respondingcommunicative acts. Unfortunately, while grammatical errors are likely
to be accepted by native speakers, English learners‟ pragmatic incompetence seems
to be much less tolerated, and is often consideredrude. This again highly appreciates
the importance of mastering saying the right thing at the right time to avoid
unintentional impoliteness, misunderstandings, or communication breakdown.
The speech act of request has been regarded as one of the face-threatening
acts (FTAs) in communication, since it intrinsically threatens the hearer‟s face and
is affected by social parameters (Brown and Levinson, 1987). Requests occur in
everyday life and play a leading role in human interaction as a vital part of
successful communication. Hence, many interlanguage and cross-cultural pragmatic
studies within different language backgrounds have widely examined the speech act
of request such as House & Kasper (1981, 1987), Blum-Kulka (1987), Blum-Kulka
et al. (1989), Trosborg (1995), Hassall (1999), Tam (2005). Most of those studies
focused on examining the use of pragmalinguistic formulae employed to express the
request head act and the modification devices that accompany it. Obviously, these
studies have investigated numerous aspects of the Head Act of request and provided

 What mitigation devices are employed by characters in “Twilight” in their
requests?
5. Scope of the study
The study focuses entirely on the verbal aspect related to speech acts. Other
non-verbal aspects such as facial expressions and eye contact are beyond the scope
of the study. Theories of speech acts and politeness are applied. The study uses the
theoretical framework which is based on Blum- Kulka et al.‟s (1989) and
Trosborg‟s (1995) coding system. All requests made by the characters in “Twilight”
are the data source.
6. Significance of the study
The study would hopefully be of theoretical and practical significance in the
area of pragmatics where the use of linguistic acts should be taken into account.
Theoretically, the study would contribute to a better understanding of speech
acts in general and the speech act of request in particular.
Practically, findings of the study would heighten Vietnamese learners and
teachers‟ awareness of native speakers‟ use of request strategies. As a result,
Vietnamese learners of English could probably adopt appropriate tones of polite
requests in the English language to improve their pragmatic competence. More
importantly, the research findings would be a reference source for those who have
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deep concerns about the utilization of politeness strategies in requests as well as
other speech acts.
7. Method of the study
The method employed in this study is mainly the Quantitative method which
stresses more on the collection and analysis of numerical data and statistic. The
study makes use of utterances in “Twilight” as the major data source, thus counting
and measuring are commonly used. The research findings are generally presented in
tables and charts or figures.
8. Organization of the study

The theory of speech act has become one of the most central aspects in the study of
language use since its initiation by Austin (1962). Many other philosophers and
linguistics such as Searle (1969, 1975, 1976, 1979), Grice (1957, 1975), Leech (1983),
and Yule (1996) had special interests in the notions of speech acts.
Austin (1962) observed that when people use language they do not only produce a
set of correct sentences in isolation, they produce them in action; i.e., people do things
through the use of language and thus utterances could be regarded as speech acts.
Speech acts are, as generally claimed by Yule (1996: 47), the actions performed via
utterances in people‟s attempting to express themselves in communication and in
everyday life are specifically labeled as, for example, apology, complaint, compliment,
or request. These speech acts are regarded as the basic or minimal units of linguistic
communication and are performed in actual situations of language use (Searle,
1969:16). According to Austin (1962), a speech act could at the same time constitute
three kinds of acts. A locutionary act (or locution) “includes the utterance of certain
noises, the utterance of certain words in a certain construction and the utterance of
them with a certain „meaning‟” (ibid: 94). In other words, it is the actual syntax and
lexicon that the speaker (S) uses to convey literal meaning. An illocutionary act (or
illocution) is viewed as S‟s intention or force behind the words or sentences. It is
produced via utterances with communicative purpose in mind and thus establishes what
is called the “illocutionary force” of the speech act. A perlocutionary act (or
perlocution) is the effect the utterance has on the hearer (H) or the change caused by
the utterance. For example, when producing the meaningful utterance “It‟s cold in
here” (locutionary act), S may make a request (illocutionary act) which may get H to
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close the window (perlocutionary act). Yule (1996:49) claims that the same utterance
can potentially have quite different illocutionary forces when we use different
Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs) under different conditions. Apart from
IFIDs, each type of illocutionary acts requires appropriate conditions called felicity
conditions identified by Searle (1979:44): (1) Preparatory conditions (Hearer is able to

H is able to do; and which it is not obvious that H will do in the normal course of
events or H‟s own accord.” (Searle, 1969: 66) Specifically, a request consists of an
illocutionary act in which S desires to perform an action which is for the benefit of S
(Trosborg, 1995: 187). Therefore, this speech act has been regarded as one of the most
sensitive FTAs in communication, since it intrinsically threatens H‟s face (Brown and
Levinson, 1987). Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) broadens the term “request” as a pre-event
act that expresses S‟s expectation toward some prospective action on the part of H.
Requests require mitigation and compensation to reduce pressure or imposition on H
by means of a polite and tactful behavior.Sharing the same view with Blum-Kulka,
Yule (1996: 56) acknowledges that a request is not usually made by means of a single
speech act suddenly uttered. Requesting is typically a speech event. In most cases, to
avoid losing face, S will first produce what can be described as a “pre-request”, which
can elicit a “go ahead” or “stop” response. Consider the following example:
Her: Are you busy? (= pre-request)
Him: Not really. (= go ahead)
Her: Check over this memo (= request)
Him: Okay (= accept)
(Yule, 1996: 67)
In this case, the pre-request allows H to say that he is busy, but the response “Not
really” allows S to continue to make a request “Check over this memo.” Sometimes, a
pre-request is actually treated as a request and is responded to with the unstated, hoped
for action being performed.
Requests, together with orders, commands, suggestions, advice, etc. fall into the
category of directives. In this study, a distinction between a request and other directives
is not made because the researcher follows the previous studies by Searle (1969),
Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) and Trosborg (1995), which see the speech act of request as
an attempt to get somebody to do something, ranging in different illocutionary forces
from ordering to begging.
In conclusion, the illocutionary force and propositional content of a request can be
realized through syntax and the choice of words within contexts. Requests can be

to self, (3) Approbation Maxim: minimize dispraise and maximize praise of other, (4)
Modesty Maxim: minimize praise and maximize dispraise of self, (5) Agreement
Maxim: minimize disagreement and maximize agreement between self and other, and
(6) Sympathy Maxim: minimize antipathy and maximize sympathy between self and
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other. He asserts that expressions may vary in their levels of indirectness, and that
different levels of indirectness are associated with different degrees of politeness.
Brown and Levinson‟s (1987) theory is based on the three basic notions of face, face-
threatening acts, and politeness strategies. Face refers to “the public self-image that
every member wants to claim for himself,” (ibid: 61) consisting of two aspects:
positive and negative. A person‟s positive face “is the need to be accepted, even liked,
by others, to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that his or her
wants are shared by others”, and negative face means “the need to be independent, to
have freedom of action, and not to be imposed on by others.” (Yule, 1996:61-62)Both
of these two faces could be threatened by some certain acts which are conceptualized
as “face-threatening acts” (FTAs). These FTAs can be defined as acts that infringe on
H‟s need to maintain his/her self-esteemand be respected.
In social interaction, it is general to the mutual interest of the participants to reduce
face-threatening to a minimum because of the mutual vulnerability of face. Participants
therefore can decide either to avoid doing an FTA entirely or softening it by choosing
an appropriate politeness strategy. Brown and Levinson‟s (1987) propose five
politeness strategies ordered in terms of the degree of face-threat to the addressee. The
strategies are presented as follows:

that determine the choice of felicitous polite expressions.
The relative power relationship between S and H (P) is “an asymmetric social
dimension.” It is the degree to which H can “impose his own plans and his own self-
evaluation (face) at the expense of S‟s plans and self-evaluation.” Generally speaking,
there are two sources of P, namely material and metaphysical control. The former
concerns economic distribution and physical strength, and the latter concerns the
institutionalized roles given to individuals and accepted in society. The social distance
between S and H (D) is “a symmetric social dimension of similarity/difference within
which S and H stand for the purposes of this act. In many cases (but not all), it is based
on an assessment of the frequency of interaction and the kinds of material or non-
material goods (including face) exchange between S or H.” In effect, it is the degree of
familiarity, solidarity or social closeness between S and H as represented through in-
group and out-group membership. The absolute ranking of impositions (R) can be
culturally and situationally defined by “the degree to which they are considered to
interfere with an agent‟s wants of self-determination or of approval (his negative- and
positive-face wants.”
In brief, P, D, and R are context-dependent and culture-related parameters. For
example, in Vietnamese culture, the request of a wife to her husband “Anh đánh (lái)
ngay cái xe của anh ra chỗ khác đi” (my example), which means “Move your car right
now” in Englishcan be acceptable, but at a public car park, this request to a stranger
might be seen as inappropriate and not very polite. It is apparent that the parameters P,
D, R contribute to the seriousness of an FTA and determine the degree of politeness
with which an FTA will be performed.
1.2.3. Politeness and indirectness
Indirectness can be seen as “those cases in which one illocutionary act is
performed indirectly by way of performing another.” (Searle, 1975:60) In the literature
on politeness, there exist two points of view. Some scholars argue that participants say
things indirectly to be polite and that indirectness and politeness are closely related,
while some others challenge this perspective.
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As discussed, indirectness and politeness in speech acts including requests may be
different in particular contexts, yet they seem to be closely related.
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Blum-Kulka (1987) argues that the scale of indirectness is based on the levels of
illocutionary transparency. Hence, the more indirect the mode of realization of a
request is, the higher the interpretive demands on the hearer. The Cross-Cultural
Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) on requests and apologies by Blum-Kulka
et.al (1989) distinguishes the three levels of indirectness in requests. In direct strategies,
the illocutionary force of the utterance is indicated explicitly by grammatical, lexical, or
semantic means. Conventionally indirect requests express the illocution via fixed
linguistic convention of means (choice of semantic device, ask about H‟s ability) or
convention of forms (the wording of the request) established in the speech community
as a form to realize requests. Non-conventionally indirect requests rely seriously on the
context and tend to be “open-ended, both in terms of propositional content and
linguistic form as well as pragmatic force.” A scale consisting of nine request strategies
ranked in order of increasing degree of indirectness has been identified by Blum-Kulka
et al. (1989:275), as follows:
1. Mood derivable:
Clean up the kitchen!
2. Performatives:
I ask/request you to clean u the kitchen.
3. Hedges Performatives:
I‟d like to ask you to clean up the kitchen.
4. Locution Derivable:
You should/have to clean up the kitchen.
5. Want statement:
I‟d like/want/wish you to clean up the kitchen.
6. Suggestory Formulae:
How about cleaning up the kitchen?

Could you lend me your car? Willingness
Would you lend me your car? Permission
May I borrow your car?

Str. 3
Suggestory formulae
How about lending me your car?
Cat. III
Conventionally indirect (speaker-based conditions)

Str. 4
Wishes
I would like to borrow your car.

Str. 5
Desires/Needs
I want/need to borrow your car.
Cat. IV
Direct request

Str. 6
Obligation
You must/ have to lend me your car.


In conclusion, the relationship between indirectness and politeness are important in
English requests. While the scale of indirectness appears to follow similar pattern in all
language, the specific proportion in the choices of more polite or less polite strategies
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in requests are culture-determined (Tam, 2005: 28). Generally, indirectness is usually
used as a form associated with greater politeness and in certain contexts is increased
when more options are given to the addressee.
1.2.5. Modification
In addition to strategy types and levels of directness, modification also functions as
one of the dimensions with which speakers can vary the politeness value of their
requests. Modification can be understood as an additional element that is introductory
or subsequent to the Head Act. This element may tone down the impact of an utterance
or have the opposite effect of increasing the impact on H (Blum-Kulka, 1985).
Modifications include internal modification and external modification.
Internal modification is that occurring within the Head Act, including syntactic
downgraders, lexical downgraders, and upgraders that modify the head act of request
by mitigating or intensifying the illocutionary force (Wang, 2001). Leech (1983) points
out that by using internal modification, S might give H more optionality and distances
her/himself from a request, thus is more polite. He also suggests that the use of lexical
items makes H feel free from imposition hence the requestive act is more tentative and
tactful.
External modification includes supportive moves which are external to the Head
Act, standing before or after it. These elements are those used to mitigate or aggravate
S‟s request that can help to reduce the imposition on H. House & Kasper (1987)
concedes that to “persuade” H to perform the desired action, supporting statements
need to be made use of. Trosborg (1995:215), in agreement with House & Kasper,
states that a request has been characterized as an act that has high imposition on the
requestee, hence it is important that “the request appears plausible and justifiable to the
person who is to perform it.”

perform their requests while Palestinian speakers prefer giving reasons. First name is
commonly used among Australian speakers whereas Palestinian speakers only use first
name to address young people. The two cultures also shared the same concept of “face”
such as “honor”, “respect”, “dignity”.
In sum, the aforementioned studies have investigated numerous aspects of the
Head Act of request and provided a relatively full understanding in single language,
interlanguage, and cross-culture pragmatics. However, there seems to remain gaps in
literary genre that need to be bridged. This study is an attempt to support these studies
and to fill the gap in the area.
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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
This chapter consists of four main sections. Section 2.1 revises the research
questions whereas section 2.2 presents the data collection. Section 2.3 discusses the
data analysis, and the last section provides the study‟s analytical framework.
2.1. Research questions
The study seeks to answer the following research questions:
 What polite request strategies are employed by the characters in “Twilight”?
 What mitigation devices in requests are employed by the characters in
“Twilight”?
2.2. Data collection
The data of the study is the corpus of 683 requests collected from the novel
“Twilight” by Stephenie Meyer published by Little, Brown and Company in 2005.
The request utterances in this study are identified as those carrying the
illocutionary force of getting somebody to do something, ranging from ordering to
begging. Specifically, in “Twilight”, the illocutionary force and propositional
content of a request can be realized through syntax and the choice of words within
context. The relationships among the characters also contribute to the realization of
the request utterances. Such suggestory forms as “Why don‟t you sit with me
today?” (p.87)or Elliptical phrases as “Esme?” (p.401, a request to help Bella