2001 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Acomparative Study of Politeness concerning Request Expressions
| Project/Area Number |
11610567
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
言語学・音声学
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| Research Institution | Chukyo University |
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Principal Investigator |
TSUZUKI Masako Chukyo University, Liberal Arts, Professor, 教養部, 教授 (00227448)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
MIYAMOTO Setsuko Himeji Institute of Technology, Environment and Humanities, Associate Professor, 環境人間学部, 助教授 (60305688)
ZHANG Qin Chukyo University, Liberal Arts, Associate Professor, 教養部, 助教授 (50298478)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1999 – 2001
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| Keywords | Request and Invitation / Positive Politeness / Negative Politeness / Question Forms / Imperative Forms / Japanese / English / Chinese |
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| Research Abstract |
We have conducted a comparative (Japanese, English and Chinese) investigation of politeness concerning request and invitation expressions.
For the politeness degree of positive questions and negative questions as requests, we find that negative questions are more polite than positive questions in Japanese and that the reverse is true in English and Chinese. We then explore the effect of these cross-linguistic differences upon L2 acquisition. We find that in the phenomena of L1 transfer, the idea of proximity between the target language and the native language must be taken into consideration rather than the idea of markedness.
As for the politeness of imperative forms or question forms, we find that in the case of requests, imperative forms are less appropriate than question forms in all these languages. But when it comes to invitation, we find that imperative forms are more grammaticalized as appropriate invitation forms in Japanese and Chinese than in English. This suggests that 'positive politeness' takes priority in Japanese and Chinese societies in contrast to English societies.
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