1

Nghiên cứu chiến lược lịch sự trong lời thỉnh
cầu của các nhân vật trong tiểu thuyết
“Chạng vạng” của Stephenie Meyer

Trần Thị Phương Linh

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn ThS ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn:
Năm bảo vệ: 2012

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 “Twilight”
overwhelmingly chose the Direct Strategies in formulating their requests, in which
the Imperative Strategy or Mood Derivable was the most preferable strategy. On
the choice of Internal Modifications, the speakers in “Twilight” used a wide range
of mitigating devices within the Head Act to reduce the requestive force, mostly the
Question forms, Downtoners, and Past tense. With reference to External
Modifications, the speakers mostly chose Grounders to give reasons for their
requests. The findings also show that the choice of request strategies and mitigating
devices was influenced by the relationships between the characters.

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Lời thỉnh cầu; Chiến lược lịch sự; Kỹ năng nói; Tiểu thuyết


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 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 a relatively full understanding in single language,
3

interlanguage, and cross-culture pragmatics. However, there seems to remain gaps in
literary genre that need to be bridged since literature, as being judged, plays a significant
role in our life, especially the spiritual one. It has worked as a reflection of society and
culture (Thao, 2010); as a matter of fact, language, especially daily language used in a
literary works appears to be presented truthfully and naturally.
A long with the researcher’s special personal interest in the topic, these factors have
created an urge for her to choose the minor thesis, namely “A study on politeness strategies
in requests used by characters in the novel“Twilight” by Stephenie Meyer”. The study
aims to investigate English native speakers’ use of polite request strategies and

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 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 study comprises three parts.
Part A is “Introduction” which presents the rationale, aims and objectives, research
questions, scopes, significance, method and organization of the study.
Part B entitled “Development” consists of three chapters.
Chapter 1 reviews the literature on speech acts, the speech act of request, and
politeness theory which play a role of basis for the analysis work.
Chapter 2 is “Methodology” which outlines the data collection, data analysis, and
analytical framework.
Chapter 3 is “Data Analysis”, which consists of two sections: the 1
st
one gives an
overview on “Twilight”, and the 2
nd
one is an investigation of polite request strategies
which provides a collection of examples and detailed analysis to uncover how the

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 change her clothes) were accordingly coded as
request utterances.
2.3. Data analysis
6

For data analysis, the study made use of the framework proposed by Blum-Kulka et
al.’s (1989) and Trosborg’s (1995) coding scheme. Depending on the contexts and
linguistic devices used, the strategies were classified under three categories: Category I-
Direct, Category II- Conventionally Indirect, and Category III- Non-Conventionally
Indirect (See Appendix B for sample of coding procedure). The number of requests in each
category was calculated along with its relative frequency of occurrence in the data. Request
modifications were also discussed, mainly in two groups: Internal modifications and
external modifications. The result was then presented in tables and charts. 2.4. Analytical framework
The coding system used in this study is based closely on Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989)
and Trosborg’s (1995) coding manual. A request is characterized to consist of a Head Act

Strategy 7: Query preparatory
a. Reference to hearer’s ability
b. Reference to hearer’s willingness
c. Permission request
2.4.3.3. Non- conventionally indirect requests (NCI)- Category 3
Strategy 8: Non-explicit requests
a. Stating potential grounders:
b. Questioning the feasibility of the precondition for the act.
c. Questioning the availability of the Hearer
2.4.4. Internal modification
Internal modification includes syntactic downgraders, lexical/phrasal downgraders,
and upgraders.
2.4.4.1. Syntactic downgraders
 Questions
 Negation
 Past tense
 Conditional clause
 Embedding
 Modals
 Non-conventional structures
 Aspect (progressive)
2.4.4.2. Lexical/ Phrasal downgraders
 Politeness markers
 Consultative devices
 Downtoners
 Understatements
 Hedges
 Hesitators
 Interpersonal marker
2.4.4.3. Upgraders

3.2. Politeness strategies in requests by the characters in “Twilight”
3.2.1. The utilization of strategies
3.2.1.1. Balance of politeness strategies in requests in “Twilight”
A wide range of polite request strategies belonging to the three categories was employed
by the characters in the novel “Twilight”. As seen from Table 1, the most frequently used request
strategy types were Direct(DR) and Conventionally Indirect(CI) ones, with a rather small
difference in the occurring rates. The results show that 323 request utterances (47.3%) out of 683
were opted out for the Direct category, and 251 (36.7%) belong to the Conventionally Indirect
category. The least preferred request strategies in “Twilight” were Non-conventionally
Indirect(NCI) ones with the frequency of 16% (109 utterances).
As appears in the data, the characters in “Twilight” overwhelmingly chose the
DRstrategies in formulating their requests. This challenges the presumption that American
speakers tends to be direct in their conversations. A possible explanation for this is that
directness, which might be used to show solidarity, friendliness, and concerns, is one of the
typical features of the American culture. Moreover, in “Twilight”, the cases of emergencies and
extreme tensions where most direct strategies were found appeared with a relatively high
frequency. Close relationship among the characters of the novel, namely lovers, family members
and friends, is also another explanation.
3.2.1.2. Analysing politeness strategies in requests used in “Twilight”
2

Different strategies in requests were opted by the characters in “Twilight”. All of the
eight strategies with sub-strategies based on Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) and Trosborg (1995)’s
coding manual were found in this novel.

Figure 2: Polite request strategies by types in “Twilight”
Imp.= Imperatives
Ned.= Needs
Abi.= Ability
Grou.= Grounders

3.7
9.2
6.3
10
4.7
9.4
4
2.6
0
10
20
30
40
50
Imp.
Perf.
Obli.
Ned.
Desi.
Sug.
Abi.
Will.
Perm.
Grou.
Feas.
Avail.
Percentage (%)
3

Figure 3: The use of internal modifications in “Twilight”

3.2.2.2. The use of external modifications or Supportive Moves
Modifications
Grd.
Prep.
Dis.
Swtn.
Prom.
Cos.
n
123
8
6
3
10
6
Percentage (%)
78.8
5.1
3.8
1.9
6.4
3.8
Table 4: The use of external modifications in “Twilight”
Grd. = Grounders
Dis. = Disarmers
Prom. = Promise of a reward
Prep. = Preparators
Swtn. = Sweeteners
Cos. = Cost minimizing
As shown in Table 4, various External Modifications or Supportive Moves were found in the