ABSTRACT

Despite extensive literature on what may be involved in making a request, there is dispute among scholars as to which linguistic formats constitute the social action of making a request proper. In this study, we examine the much-disputed declarative request format and in particular what we call “declaratives of trouble.” We present evidence that in the context of a service encounter such as the shoe repair shop, this format is unproblematically and systematically treated by both customer and service provider as performing requests. The study thus enriches our understanding of action formation and ascription by examining in detail that and how utterances that in some contexts might not serve as requests in other contexts constitute a primary resource for building requests. Data are in American English.

抽象的

尽管有关提出请求可能涉及什么的文献很多，但学者们还是争论哪种语言形式构成了提出请求的社会行为。在本研究中，我们研究了争议较大的声明式请求格式，尤其是所谓的“麻烦声明”。我们提供的证据表明，在诸如修鞋店之类的服务遇到的情况下，客户和服务提供商将这种格式毫无疑问和系统地视为执行请求。因此，该研究通过详细研究在某些情况下可能无法用作其他情况下的要求的言语构成构建请求的主要资源，从而丰富了我们对动作形成和归属的理解。数据使用美式英语。