Politeness and Indirectness Strategies in German and Korean Requests and Complaints

Abstract

This study investigates cross-linguistic variations in the speech act productions of German and Korean requests and complaints. We aim to demonstrate that the relationship between indirectness and politeness is interpreted differently across cultures. The differences in politeness and in-directness strategies will be shown to be closely linked with culture-specific preferences for grammatical and pragmatic markers in the investigated languages. In an attempt to draw cross-linguistic generalizations, syntactic, lexical and pragmatic systems will be compared and investigated based on discourse completion tests. We discuss the cross-linguistic strategies for preferences for interrogatives and imperatives employed in the given discourse situations depending on the status or familiarity of the interlocutors.