Traditionally, the speech act of requesting has been regarded as a face-threatening act (Brown & Levinson, 1987) due to the impositive nature on the addressee’s negative face. Yet, in specific service encounters, requests can no longer be seen as threatening (Antonopoulou, 2001). This is the case of tourist information offices, where mitigators may not be present due to the task-oriented nature of the exchange. This study aims to widen the scope of research on service encounters by examining 147 naturally occurring requests by native speakers of English in a tourist information office taking into account the variable of gender. Our findings suggest that females used more direct questions whereas men employed want statements to a much higher extent. These results have to be understood within the context of this specific service encounter, in which direct requests do not imply impoliteness or threats to the requestee’s negative face.

中文翻译：

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旅游咨询处遇到的要求

传统上，由于讲话者的负面表情具有强制性，因此请求的言语行为被视为具有威胁性的行为（Brown＆Levinson，1987）。然而，在特定的服务遭遇中，请求不再被视为具有威胁性（Antonopoulou，2001）。游客咨询处就是这种情况，由于交流的面向任务性质，因此可能没有缓解者在场。这项研究旨在通过考虑旅游者性别中的变量，检查旅游者英语母语者的147条自然发生的要求，从而扩大服务遭遇的研究范围。我们的研究结果表明，女性使用更直接的问题，而男性则希望表达更高的要求。必须在此特定服务遇到的背景下理解这些结果，