directness in Polish children's requests at the dinner table

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

In/directness in Polish children’s requests at the dinner table Eva Ogiermann King’s College London, United Kingdom

Abstract This paper provides some new insights into the concept of in/directness by analysing Polish children’s requests. Based on videorecordings of family interactions, it examines how Polish children request and obtain objects during mealtimes, and considers a number of factors related to their choice of request forms. The paper highlights the central role want statements play in child--adult interactions, the different uses of performative requests in Polish homes, and the impact of recurrent routines on the use of the so called off-record strategies, making them similar to direct requests. The study also makes a contribution to research on children’s socialisation. Unlike many previous studies which seem to equate child agency with resistance, it shows how children who are positioned by their parents as equals at the dinner table adopt a more formal language style by using conventionally indirect requests. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Object requests; In/directness; Children; Polish; Family mealtimes

1. Introduction Family mealtimes have been studied extensively -- and in a wide range of disciplines. Not only are they one of the few activities bringing all family members together, and thus play a central role in constructing the family as a unit, they are also important sites for the socialisation of children into competent members of a social and cultural group. Work on children’s socialisation during mealtimes has also made a significant contribution to the study of requests, which play a central role in forming children’s eating habits and table manners. However, as these studies focus on parental directives, the insights they provide into children’s language use are derived mainly from their responses -- which often contest and resist rules for food consumption (e.g. Hepburn and Potter, 2010; Kent, 2012). Although there is a consensus that mealtimes provide ‘‘the essential testing-ground where children hone their skills as communicators’’ (Cook-Gumperz and Kyratzis, 2003, online version), the available studies do not tell us much about children’s displays of communicative competence and reproduction of politeness norms. The present study examines requests for objects produced by Polish children during family mealtimes, thus shifting the focus from parental ‘control acts’ to children’s use of requests at the dinner table. A close analysis of the different request forms used by the children not only reveals some factors pertaining to the choice of request formats in the analysed setting, but also challenges the classification of particular request forms as in/direct suggested in previous research (e.g. Brown and Levinson, 1978/1987).

E-mail address: [email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.03.007 0378-2166/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

68

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

2. Literature review 2.1. In/directness The concept of indirectness in pragmatics goes back to Grice’s (1967 [1975]) work on conversational implicatures and Searle’s (1975) work on indirect speech acts, in which he states that ‘‘in directives, politeness is the chief motivation for indirectness’’ (Searle, 1975:64). Pragmatic politeness theories equate indirectness with politeness as it increases optionality for the hearer (Leech, 1983) and mitigates face-threat (Brown and Levinson, 1987). Brown and Levinson distinguish between three suprastrategies representing different levels of in/directness: Offrecord strategies, such as hints, flout Grice’s maxims, and are least direct and most polite. On-record strategies, which consist of indirect forms conventionally associated with requesting, such as Can you, are regarded as both face-saving and unambiguous. And the most direct and face-threatening requests, such as imperatives, are referred to as bald onrecord and associated with clarity and efficiency. Empirical work conducted in the area of cross-cultural pragmatics has confirmed the correlation between indirectness and politeness underlying Brown and Levinson’s framework, and a scale of in/directness distinguishing between direct, conventionally indirect and non-conventionally indirect requests has been proposed (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989, see Appendix). Within this framework, in/directness is equated with ‘‘the relative length of the inferential path needed to arrive at an utterance’s illocutionary point’’ (Blum-Kulka, 1987:133). Direct (bald on-record) requests are syntactically marked as requests or explicitly perform the speech act of requesting. Conventionally indirect requests ‘‘realize the act by reference to contextual preconditions necessary for its performance, as conventionalized in a given language’’ (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984:201), and non-conventionally indirect (off-record) requests rely entirely on contextual clues.1 Research conducted in cross-cultural pragmatics has further demonstrated that speakers of different languages opt for different levels of directness, with Polish speakers showing a relatively strong preference for direct forms, notably imperatives (e.g. Lubecka, 2000; Ogiermann, 2009a).2 Some researchers have also argued that interpretations of in/ directness are culture-specific (e.g. Wierzbicka, 1985; Sifianou, 1997; Ogiermann, 2009a) -- a claim that finds ample support in studies of parent--child interactions conducted in different countries. Clancy (1986), who defines indirectness as ‘‘the amount of room a directive leaves for noncompliance’’ (Clancy, 1986:222) demonstrates how Japanese mothers teach their children to be indirect through the ‘‘pairing of indirect with direct utterances having the same communicative intent’’ (Clancy, 1986:229). Blum-Kulka (1997), in contrast, finds that over 70% of parental directives in her Israeli and Jewish American data take the form of imperatives, and she rejects the scale of indirectness proposed in her early work as invalid for family discourse. At the same time, researchers examining parental directives in British families have concluded that request formats ‘‘vary in the degree to which the speaker assumes control over the recipient’s actions, or the recipient retains autonomy over their own conduct’’ (Kent, 2012:712, see also Craven and Potter, 2010). Recent work in anthropology and child studies reflects the increasing democratization of families in Western countries and emphasizes children’s agency and self-regulation. In this context, directives play a crucial role in balancing ‘‘parental involvement and interference and children’s individual action’’ (Aronsson and Cekaite, 2011:138). The studies often focus on conflict episodes in family interaction, where parents use increasingly direct request forms (Goodwin, 2006; Aronsson and Cekaite, 2011; Goodwin and Cekaite, 2013, see also Ervin-Tripp, 1977). In Aronsson and Cekaite’s study (2011), for instance, parents’ attempts to get their children to have a shower or clean up their room took the form of prolonged sequences starting with hints, followed by mitigated request forms, which were then reformulated as direct requests and even threats. 2.2. Factors underlying the selection of request forms While there is a consensus in previous work conducted in different areas that requests can be placed on a continuum of in/directness, the explanations provided range from considerations of illocutionary transparency and politeness to issues of autonomy and control. Similarly, the factors suggested as impacting on speakers’ choices of request formats vary across studies.

1

Although off-record requests are understood as being most polite within both frameworks, it should be borne in mind that they are actually defined as strategies that reduce accountability for the speaker (Brown and Levinson, 1987:73) and increase the interpretative demands on the hearer (Blum-Kulka, 1987). 2 While this preference is even more pronounced in Polish family interactions (Zinken and Ogiermann, 2013), research into the use of a Polish verb expressing deontic modality in the impersonal, declarative construction trzeba x (one needs to x), which can be regarded as an off-record strategy, has illustrated how unaddressed participants involve themselves in an action deemed necessary by another family member (Zinken and Ogiermann, 2011).

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

69

For Brown and Levinson, all variability can be captured by three variables, namely: social distance [D] and relative social power [P], which define the relationship between the interlocutors, and the ranking of imposition [R], i.e. the extent to which a particular request impedes the hearer’s wants. The higher the assessment of these variables, the more facethreat is involved in producing the request, and the higher the level of indirectness needed to redress this. These variables are not regarded as the only relevant ones, but they are claimed to ‘‘subsume all others’’ (1987:80).3 And yet, studies of children’s socialisation show that there are situations where parents use different types of requests despite all these variables being constant. The fact that their use of increasingly direct forms is contingent on the children’s resistance cannot be accounted for by Brown and Levinson’s formula, which provides an a priori estimation of face-threat inherent in an individual speech act of requesting. Sequential properties of request forms have, however, been studied in the field of conversation analysis. The most frequently studied factor, which has been explored in relation to the choice of request forms across a wide range of contexts and languages, is entitlement (Lindström, 2005; Heinemann, 2006; Curl and Drew, 2008; Craven and Potter, 2010; Dixon, 2015). The concept of entitlement bears some similarity to that of imposition: both are situational factors which are most salient in asymmetrical relationships. While entitlement focuses on what the speaker can expect from the hearer, imposition reflects the extent to which the request will inconvenience the hearer -- which is why the use of direct requests, such as imperatives, has been linked to both high entitlement and low imposition. However, analyses of entitlement differ in that they consider speakers’ evaluations of locally unfolding contingencies. Another sequential property of the imperative format that has been established is that it is used when the request is ‘‘consistent with projectable alignments’’ (Wootton, 2005:195) and thus can be expected to be complied with. Interrogative forms, on the other hand, are preferred over imperatives when the request is perceived as potentially disruptive to an ongoing activity. Rossi (2012), who studies Italian everyday interactions, has developed this idea further and introduced the distinction between unilateral requests, such as the interrogative Mi x?, which are used to request an action that benefits the speaker, and bilateral requests, which tend to take the imperative form and request actions that support an ‘‘established joint project between requester and recipient’’ (2012:428). The collaborative nature of imperatives emerging from Rossi’s study stands in sharp contrast to Brown and Levinson’s view of this request form as highly face-threatening and only appropriate in cases of urgency or when ‘‘S is vastly superior in power to H’’ (1987:69). 2.3. Children’s requests Conversation analytic work on requests tends to focus on adult speech; with a few exceptions, such as the above mentioned study by Wootton (1997, 2005), who has analysed his daughter’s requests produced during a variety of activities in the home, and studies of children’s peer talk, such as Dixon’s (2015) paper analysing children’s displays of ownership and entitlement accompanying their use of imperative forms and grabbing gestures in a play situation. Children’s requests have, however, been studied extensively in the areas of language acquisition and developmental psychology. Experimental studies, in which children produced a variety of request forms while playing with puzzles (Bock and Hornsby, 1981) or interacting with dolls and puppets (James, 1978; Read and Cherry, 1978) have attested children’s orientation to a number of contextual variables when making requests, such as social distance, age and gender. Studies using recordings of natural interactions, on the other hand, have documented children’s requests at different stages of their pragmatic development and identified a wealth of factors impacting on their choice of request forms. Gordon and Ervin-Tripp (1984:297), for instance, point out that requests can express anger, helpfulness or cooperation, and that their formulation can reflect how intrusive or routinised the request is perceived to be. They also consider whether the hearer is obliged to comply with the request and whether compliance is going to be difficult for the hearer or disrupt their plans; notions strongly resembling the CA concepts discussed above. In the case of object requests, the request form is also likely to be affected by who owns and who is currently using the desired object (Gordon and Ervin-Tripp, 1984:298; see also Dixon, 2015 and Zinken, 2015). Huls and van Wijk (2012) arrive at as many as 25 contextual factors in their analysis of directives produced by a Dutch child over several years. They suggest that young children’s concept of context ‘‘refers to aspects of their immediate social and physical environment’’ (Huls and van Wijk, 2012:85), and only as they grow older, they develop an awareness of factors such as other people’s willingness, ability, rights and obligations. Their study further shows that children do not necessarily acquire request forms in a linear fashion, from simple, direct to more complex and less direct requests forms (see also Ervin-Tripp, 1977).

3 Other variables that have been studied in politeness research, and are potentially linked to [P] and [D], are age, gender, formality of context and presence of third parties (see Ogiermann, 2009b:28).

70

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

3. The present study The present study provides yet another perspective on children’s use of requests and on the factors underlying their choices of request forms by focusing on requests for objects uttered during mealtimes in Polish families. The data were collected within an ESRC funded project (grant reference RES-061-25-0176), which involved Polish, English and English/Polish families (see also Zinken and Ogiermann, 2011, 2013). The recordings used in this paper were made by six families; five from a middle-sized town in eastern Poland and one living in Warsaw. While it is difficult to talk about class in the Polish context, all parents had completed either secondary or higher education and were working in a wide range of professions. The families were asked to do the recordings themselves, which allowed them to switch the camera on whenever they felt at ease (and off when they did not) -- and us to reduce researcher effects. Even though it is possible that the children had been instructed to ‘behave’ before the camera was switched on, the recordings generally show that their unpredictable behaviour has added to the spontaneity of the recorded interactions. The six families provided 24 recordings with a total recording time of 9 hours and 40 minutes. 21 of these recordings were made during (the preparation and consumption of) meals; the remaining ones during play. All the Polish families involved in the project had two or more children, so that the recordings feature 16 children in total, though four of them did not produce verbal requests. The twelve children who made requests during the recorded mealtimes were aged 2--10. The data were transcribed using the conventions introduced in Conversation Analysis (Jefferson, 1984), but while the analysis draws on CA concepts, it predominantly relies on the pragmatic frameworks outlined in section 2. Unlike most work on in/directness, though, it examines family data and focuses on children’s formulations of requests. What seems puzzling about the data is that, despite the contextual conditions being virtually constant (see section 4.1) across situations, the children have used a wide range of request forms. The data thus seem to question the way in which request forms are claimed to interact with variables such as [P], [D] and [R], and to challenge the concept of in/directness; as well as its correlation with politeness. When analysing the data one needs to bear in mind, though, that some of the (younger) children participating in the study may not yet have developed the cognitive abilities required to implicate and infer meaning in off-record strategies; or they may not master the syntactic complexity underlying some conventionally indirect request forms. In fact, Brown and Levinson restrict the application of their theory to ‘‘all competent adult members of a society’’ (1987:61, emphasis mine); but studies looking at children’s pragmatic development have shown that children ‘‘rely on rules which have been suggested as part of adult pragmatic competence’’ (James, 1978:316) and that they ‘‘possess an extensive repertoire of directive forms -- showing awareness of age, familiarity of the listener and the probability of the listener’s compliance’’ (Read and Cherry, 1978:233). Although Gordon and Ervin-Tripp (1984:317) have found that American children only start paying attention to face when making requests at age 8, within the specific setting analysed here, mitigation of face-threat is not likely to be the (main?) motivation for using indirect forms. One could even argue that children’s requests for food directed at their parents during mealtimes do not involve face-threat; and that the reasons for choosing in/direct forms must, therefore, lie elsewhere. 4. Results 4.1. Preliminary discussion -- The context of family mealtimes While a close analysis of the children’s requests during the recorded family mealtimes is likely to reveal local properties of their chosen request forms, an investigation of the concept of in/directness within family discourse requires an understanding of the family as an interactional unit. Hence I would like to begin by discussing some broad contextual variables defining this particular setting, as well as the activity during which the requests have been produced. Brown and Levinson’s concept of social distance places relationships between family members at the low end of the scale, but it does not necessarily capture the strong emotional involvement between them. For Blum-Kulka (1990, 1997), affect4 is one of the key notions that determine family interactions; along with informality and power. It seems that Brown and Levinson’s variable of social power can be applied to the family context in that parents can impose their plans on their children (1987:77). As Ochs and Taylor (1992:301) argue, they can ‘‘review, judge, formulate codes of conduct, make decisions and impose sanctions that evaluate and impact the actions, conditions, thoughts and feelings’’ of their children. At the same time, parental power is inextricably linked to responsibility; to provide children with what they need, to educate them and help them become competent and independent members of their society.

4 This variable has been discussed in a variety of contexts. Slugoski and Turnbull (1988), for instance, have shown that ‘affect’ is more decisive than social distance when distinguishing compliments from indirect insults, and Brown and Gilman (1989) have suggested ‘liking’ as the main factor increasing the use of politeness in Shakespearean tragedies.

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

71

The importance attached to parental involvement vs. children’s independence differs across groups, societies and cultures, and this is likely to impact on the level of in/directness in both parents’ and children’s speech. While Blum-Kulka explains the high level of directness in her data by saying that ‘‘adults need to verbally control the behaviour of young children’’ (1997:142), studies of Swedish and British families have demonstrated how parental authority is challenged through resistance, and suggested that ‘‘the authority of parents should be based upon an implicit contract’’ (Aronsson and Gottzén, 2011:406). While some Polish parents may agree with this suggestion, most Polish families will be more inclined to emphasise the asymmetrical nature of a parent--child relationship and give preference to involvement over nonimposition. The families taking part in this study, in particular, were very religious, which makes them more likely to rely on traditional family roles. Another factor that needs to be taken into account is that the requests analysed in the present study take place during a particular activity (Levinson, 1979), namely mealtimes, and that ‘‘the syntactic and sequential shape of directives is related to the activities they are performing’’ (Goodwin and Cekaite, 2013:123). The activity of requesting food items can be captured by the situation-specific concepts of imposition (Brown and Levinson, 1987) and entitlement (Curl and Drew, 2008). The imposition of requests in this context appears to be minimal as food items, as well as other items necessary to consume them, are free goods (Goffman, 1967). It is the parents’ responsibility to provide food, and the children are not just entitled but even obliged to consume what has been prepared for them. This is clearly reflected in studies which have illustrated the difficulties parents face in ensuring that their children consume a nutritious meal (Hepburn and Potter, 2010; Kent, 2012) -- while there does not seem to be any record of children facing problems in obtaining food found on the dinner table. Since helping, especially younger, children to consume their food is part of a family meal, the children’s requests are unlikely to be seen as disruptive (Wootton, 1997, 2005) and the conditions necessary for granting a request for a food item can be regarded as fulfilled (Curl and Drew, 2008). Mandelbaum’s study of family dinners, for instance, has led her to the conclusion that ‘‘interactants enact high entitlement to have their request granted, and that they do not regard their interlocutors as facing contingencies that would prevent them from fulfilling the request by delivering the requested item’’ (2014:216). 4.2. Data analysis The data contain a total of 156 requests for objects used by both parents and children in a variety of situations, such as preparing food, consuming food, playing or doing crafts. While about half of these requests take the form of imperatives (Zinken and Ogiermann, 2013:262), a different pattern emerges when distinguishing between parents and children, on the one hand, and narrowing down the focus to object requests uttered during mealtimes, on the other. 84 of the 156 requests were for food items, crockery and cutlery, napkins and other objects which are needed during meals. 36 of them were produced by parents and 48 by children. The majority of the requests uttered by parents took the form of imperatives (26 of 36) -- whether they addressed the children or each other -- but there were only six imperatives among the 48 requests uttered by the children.5 Given the contextual conditions discussed above and the strong preference for imperative constructions in the parents’ requests (which serve as linguistic input for the children), the low number of imperatives found in the analysed sample of Table 1 Object request formats and speaker’s age. Request forms

Examples

N = 48

Age

Want Statements

Ja też cie mięska/Ja też bym chciała. I also want meat/I’d also like some. Daj mi ziemniako´w. Give me some potatoes. Ja poproszę jak najwiecej grzybo´w. I ask for as many mushrooms as possible. Tata, podasz mi duży talerz na pierożki? Dad, will you give me a big plate for pierogi? Mamusiu, możesz mi nalac´ herbatki? Mum, can you pour me some tea? Ja nie mam s´liniaka. I don’t have a bib.

12

2--10

6

2--6

8

3--10

6

3--10

10

6--10

6

3--10

Imperatives Simple Performatives Simple Interrogatives Interrogatives with modal verbs Off record/Hints

5 A possible reason for the higher frequency of imperatives in the parents’ requests is that they were more likely to ask for items to be fetched from the kitchen while children tended to ask for items for their own dinner. While politeness scholars would view the former as involving more imposition, they appear to fall into Rossi’s category of bilateral requests (2012) as the items were requested for the benefit of all/other family members, which also increases the speakers’ entitlement to make such requests.

72

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

children’s speech seems rather surprising -- as does the fact that the children used a wide range of request forms; despite the contextual conditions being very similar for all requests. Table 1 illustrates the variety of request forms found in the data. On the whole, the children produced 26 forms which would be classified as direct in politeness research. Nearly half of them were ‘want statements’, with the other half being comprised of imperatives and (simple) performatives. Sixteen requests took interrogative forms, which would be regarded as conventionally indirect, though only ten of them contained modal verbs. Finally, six requests could be described as hints and thus match the category off-record. 4.2.1. Direct requests The most frequent request form in the data is the ‘want statement’, which was mainly used by younger children (with the verb often pronounced imperfectly, as in the fragments below). This is consistent with previous findings (e.g. Ervin-Tripp, 1977; Wootton, 1981/2014), which have also established that children use more want statements when talking to parents than with peers (Read and Cherry, 1978:234). The following extract provides an example of a want statement produced by 2-year old Stas´. Extract 1, Father and Stas´ (2) 01 STA: ! ja cie herbate I want tea.ACC I want tea. 02 FAT:

herbaty chcesz, bardzo proszę. tea.GEN want.2SG very please You want tea? There you go.

Stas´‘s request takes place at the beginning of the dinner and there is a tea pot on the table, making it easy to comply with the request. The father does so by rephrasing the child’s want statement in the second person and stressing the word ‘tea’ by moving it to the beginning of the sentence, thus confirming the object to be provided. This is followed by the formula proszę (please, lit. ‘I beg’),6 intensified by the adverb bardzo (very). This formula is very frequently used in the present data, where it either immediately precedes or accompanies the provision of the requested object. During meals involving several children, want statements were often accompanied by the adverb też (also), where a child expressed interest in a food item offered to or consumed by another child. The following fragment illustrates a child uttering a want statement as a reaction to another child being given a piece of meat: Extract 2, Mother, Sławek (2), Madzia (3) 01 MO: proszę Sławku please Sławek.VOC There you go, Sławek 02

(0.5)

03 MO:

04 MA:

*mięsko meat.DIM meat *puts a piece of meat on Sławek’s plate !

ja tes´ chciem mięska I also want meat.DIM.GEN I want meat, too.

Another potential reason for the relatively high frequency of want statements in the data is that the children are repeatedly being asked if they want (more) potatoes, salad, meat etc., so that their want statements could be regarded as (delayed) responses to the parents’ recurrent offers (see extract 4). The parents also respond to children’s requests by referring to the requested object as something that the children want (see extracts 1, 3 and 4) -- irrespective of the request format used.

6 Proszę is the 1st person singular of the verb prosic´ (to ask, to beg) and although it can function as the politeness marker ‘please’, it does not often accompany Polish requests (see Ogiermann, 2009a), and it does not serve this function in the present data. It is, however, used as a performative request -- as well as being used when providing or offering an object.

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

73

Another form that has been classified as direct and that occurs relatively frequently in the present data, is the performative request form poproszę. As the formula proszę discussed above, it is derived from the verb prosic´ (‘to ask for’, ‘to beg’). The prefix po- can have the grammatical function of turning verbs into the perfective aspect -- as well as adding other nuances to their meaning. The 1st person singular form poproszę combined with a noun phrase naming the requested object is a highly conventionalised way of requesting goods in Polish.7 According to the Polish linguist Marcjanik (1997), poproszę is used when an object is requested with the aim of buying or checking it (e.g. documents by a policeman). She argues that the choice of this form emphasises the speaker’s entitlement to have the object, and she describes poproszę as brief and to the point (1997:171). Her description seems to support the view that poproszę is a direct strategy with a transparent illocution. At the same time, the contexts in which it usually appears make it sound formal; expressing negative politeness. While poproszę is often used by customers ordering food in a restaurant, the recurrent use of this formula by Polish children as young as 3 in their homes is rather unexpected -- especially since there is no evidence in the data of parents insisting on the use of this polite form. Extract 3, Mother, Romek (6) ! poproszę dokładki 01 RO: beg.1SG addition.GEN Can I have another serving? 02

(2.5)

03 MO:

chcesz dokładkę? ((takes the child’s bowl)) want.2SG addition.ACC Do you want another serving?

In this extract, the children are eating breakfast at the kitchen table and the parents are preparing other food when Romek asks for another portion of cereals, using the form poproszę. This is done in a rather confident tone and without looking up from his bowl, which conveys high entitlement. The mother’s response, slightly delayed as she walks across the kitchen, consists in a reformulation of the request in the form of a question with the verb chciec´ (want). This makes her reaction very similar to that of the father in extract 1. It also shows that despite the different request forms used by the children, both parents react by orienting to their children’s needs. As extract 3 shows, when poproszę is used to initiate the transfer of an object, it is accompanied by a noun phrase specifying that object. It can, however, also occur in response to an offer, in which case poproszę is used on its own -implicitly referring to the object named in the offer -- to complete the adjacency pair: Extract 4, Mother, Lesio (6), Piotrek (11) 01 MO: ktos´ chce ketchup u nas? somebody wants ketchup at us Does anybody here want ketchup? 02 LES:

ni[e: No

03 MO:

!

ty chcesz Piotrus´ you want Piotrek.DIM You want some, Piotrek?

05 MO:

06 PIO:

[popr↑o:::sz↓ę: beg.1SG Please ?

04 PIO:

[do pi[zzy to pizza.GEN with the pizza

!

8tak poproszę8 Yes, please.

7 Although it is also possible to make requests using the imperfective form proszę, in particular in combination with an infinitive construction ( proszę poczekac´ - ‘please wait’) or a prepositional phrase ( proszę o pomoc -- ‘I ask for help’), requests for objects tend to take the form poproszę.

74

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

This sequence begins with the mother issuing an offer directed at all parties present (ktos´ u nas -- ‘anybody here’). While Lesio provides a dispreferred response in a preferred format, Piotrek’s preferred response takes the form of an enthusiastic poproszę (line 4). Similarly to extracts 1 and 3, the mother’s confirming response contains the verb chciec´ (want). In this extract, however, the verb had already been used in the offer and is used again (line 5), together with the pronoun ty (you) -- which is optional and used for emphasis in Polish -- and the addressee’s name, thus identifying the person to be provided with the offered object. This is then followed by a quiet confirmation repeating the performative: tak, poproszę (‘yes, please’) from Piotrek. While in the above example, the form poproszę constitutes a preferred second pair part of an offer, in the next extract, it is used to confirm the amount of something that is being served. Extract 5, Mother, Marta (10) ((reaches with a spoon into a Pyrex dish)) 01 MO: 02 MO:

03 MAR:

tobie mało, tak? you.DAT little yes You’d like only a little bit, right? !

tak ((hiccups)) mało poproszę yes little beg.1SG Yes, only a little please.

The object to be transferred remains implicit in this dialogue, though it is clearly visible to both parties involved and being handled by the mother as she speaks. Rather than issuing an offer, the mother asks for a confirmation of the amount she is about to serve. Her turn does not contain a verb either: it merely consists of a pronoun in the dative case specifying the beneficiary, the quantifier mało (little) and a tag question. The required confirmation is then provided through the repetition of the quantifier combined with poproszę, which gives the response a request like quality. To sum up, there are two ways in which poproszę has been used in the data: as a request formula, combined with a noun phrase naming the desired object, and as an acceptance of an offer; though extract 5 illustrates a case where poproszę can be viewed as both a response to an offer and a request, which seems to confirm that the concepts of requesting and offering are closely interrelated. It is interesting to note though that while previous research has shown that requests are dispreferred actions, and offers their preferred counterparts (Schegloff, 1990:63), which makes responses to offers less face-threatening than requests (Ogiermann, 2009a:192), Polish speakers actually use the same expression in both requests and responses to offers (in the analysed setting). The least frequent type of direct requests in the data are imperatives, which were used mainly by younger children. The following dialogue takes place shortly after extract 3, in which Romek requested an extra serving of cereals using the form poproszę. A couple of minutes later, when the cereals are not forthcoming, he utters the following request: Extract 6, Mother, Romek (6) 01 ROM: ! no:: dajcie mi dokładkę EXCL give.IMP.PL me addition Ey, give me another serving. 02 MO:

już daję already give.1SG I’m getting it right away.

The fact that the boy has to ask for his cereals for a second time is reflected in the formulation as well as the tone of his request. It starts with an elongated no (ey) which expresses impatience and annoyance, and not only is the verb in the imperative form, but with its first part being stressed, it acquires a pleading quality. Incidentally, Romek’s use of the imperative in this situation seems to confirm Brown and Levinson’s association of this bald on-record strategy with urgency (1987:69). The request is also treated as urgent by the mother, who starts her response with the adverb już (already), stressing the immediacy of her reaction. In extract 7, we can observe a similar pattern, with the 3-year old Madzia asking for potatoes using an imperative and the mother responding with a confirmation that the potatoes are coming immediately, which then happens in line 4.

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

75

Extract 7, Mother, Madzia (3) 01 MAD: ! daj mi ziemNIAKo´w give.IMP.SG me potatoes.GEN Give me potatoes. 02 MO:

już ci daję ziemniako´w already you.DAT give.1SG potatoes.GEN I’m giving you the potatoes right away.

03

(0.5)

04 MO:

proszę bardzo ziemniaczki please very potatoes.DIM There you go, potatoes.

In Wootton’s study (1997, 2005), the child used imperatives when she could presume her parents’ willingness to comply with her request, which is certainly the case when asking for food items at the dinner table. In fact, both want statements and imperatives have been discussed as request types assuming compliance ‘‘on the basis of established routines or expectations’’ (Gordon and Ervin-Tripp, 1984:311). Even though these findings refer to English-speaking children’s requests, the present data suggest that they apply to Polish children’s requests as well. The performative request form, on the other hand, clearly plays a much more central role in making requests in Polish than it does in English. 4.2.2. Off-record requests At the other end of the in/directness scale, the data contain a number of off-record requests -- or hints. Most of them draw attention to the absence of an object required to proceed with the meal: Extract 8, Father, Mother, Madzia (3), Robcio (2) 01 FA: Madziu nałożyc´ ci? Madzia.VOC put.INF.PFV you.DAT Madzia, shall I put some on your plate? 02

(0.5)

03 FA:

sałatki? salad.GEN Salad?

04 MA:

*tu Here *points to an empty spot on her plate

05 FA:

*proszę bardzo please very There you go. *puts salad on Madzia’s plate

06 FA:

((to Robcio)) Robciowi też? Robcio.DAT too For Robcio as well?

07

(0.5)

08 MA: ! JA NIE [MAM WIDE:CIA:: I NEG have fork.GEN I don’t have a fork! 09 FA:

*[((to Robcio)) proszę please There you go. *puts salad on Robcio’s plate

76

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

10 FA:

((to Madzia)) jak to nie masz widelca? how PART NEG have.2SG fork.GEN How come you don’t have a fork?

11 FA:

a ja ci dawałem PART I you.DAT give.PST.IPFV I gave you one.

12

ah: bo mama [ci zabrała widelca EXCL because mama you.DAT take away.PST.PFV fork.GEN Ah because mama took your fork away.

13 MO:

[PROszę proszę (( passes fork to Madzia)) please please Here you go.

In this extract the parents are busy putting different elements of the meal onto the children’s plates. Once Madzia and Robcio have been offered and given salad, Madzia announces that she does not have a fork (line 8). Her utterance is interpreted as a request as it results in the fork being provided (line 13). The formulation used merely states the absence of the required object, without specifying the agent and the required act, thus classifying it as an off-record strategy. The father’s response expresses surprise and provides the reason why Madzia should have a fork (lines 10--11) before the whereabouts of the fork are identified in line 12, and the mother, who seems to have borrowed the fork to help one of the other children with their food, returns it in line 13, while producing two instances of proszę (please). This fragment seems to capture a highly recurrent activity, where the children sit down to dinner while the parents provide food as well as various utensils necessary to consume it. On this occasion, one of the children flags up an irregularity in the usual routine preventing her from proceeding with her meal, which is first explored and then rectified by providing the required object. While the request uttered in line 8 can be viewed as ambiguous, and even receives two different responses -- one trying to clarify the absence, the other providing the object -- it does not involve the speaker dropping hints and hoping that the hearer picks up on them; and it is certainly not the case that the hearer ‘‘can ignore the request with impunity’’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987:213). In the case of requests uttered by young children, off-record strategies are not attempts at being tactful or devious, but merely statements expressing their needs. This makes them very similar to want statements, and they tend to receive similar responses from the parents. Compare extracts 9 and 10 below: Extract 9, Father, Mother, Madzia (3) 01 MA: ! ja nie mam s´liniaka I NEG have bib.GEN I don’t have a bib. 02 FA:

moment zaniosęzaniosę to na do´ł moment carry.PFV.1SG carry.PFV.1SG this on bottom Just a moment, I will carry- carry this downstairs.

03 MO:

zaraz będzie s´liniak at once be.FUT.3SG bib There will be a bib right away.

Extract 10, Father, Stas´ (2) 01 STA: ! ja cie herbate I want tea.ACC I want tea. 02 JAC:

herbatkę? będzie herbatka. tylko ona jest gorąca tea.DIM.ACC be.FUT.3SG tea.DIM only she is hot.F Tea? There will be tea. It’s just that it’s hot.

While Madzia uses an off-record request and Stas´ a want statement, they both receive a response assuring them that the requested object will be supplied.

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

77

According to Ervin-Tripp et al. (1990:316), young children produce what the authors call ‘problem statements’ ‘‘because they have not yet worked out what action will remedy their problem.’’ Viewing these ‘off-record requests’ as problem statements not only makes them similar to want statements, but it also explains why they can be produced by children before they understand the concept of hinting. Requests orienting to a missing object were, however, not restricted to younger children in the present data, as the following example illustrates: Extract 11, Father, Bolek (9) 01 BOL: ! gdzie jest no´ż? where is knife Where is the knife? 02 FA:

ja mam no´ż, już ci daję. proszę I have knife already you.DAT give.1SG please I have the knife, giving it to you right away. Here you go.

Bolek’s question, which seems to indicate that the knife is shared at this particular dinner table as it is referred to without a possessive pronoun, is oriented to as a request by the father, who first identifies himself as the current user of the knife and then hands it over to Bolek. This request sequence illustrates a similarity between the concepts of off-record requests and pre-requests. The first TCU of the father’s response seems to treat Bolek’s turn as a pre-request, making a request proper the next relevant action. At the same time, since the second TCU follows immediately, it does not provide a slot for the development of a full four turn sequence. As Rossi (2015) has shown, in the case of pre-requests referring to availability, it is the immediate provision of the object rather than a go-ahead response that is the unmarked and preferred form. The request analysed here differs from those discussed by Rossi in that it does not address a particular participant, which explains the father’s confirmation of availability (or location) preceding the handing over of the requested object. What is crucial though is that his response provides a shortcut -- it not only makes a request proper dispensable, but also renders the implicit (offrecord) request explicit. It seems that in the family mealtime context, many of the so-called off-record strategies refer to recurrent routines, where these indirect forms become ‘direct in context’ (Huls and van Wijk, 2012). They ‘‘appear to be prime examples of the kind of communicative abbreviation which appears in high solidarity, closed networks of communication’’ (Ervin-Tripp, 1976:44). The idea that off-record requests are highly contextualised has not been overlooked by Brown and Levinson, who state that conversational implicatures are ‘‘often dependent on the salient aspects of some particular context’’ (1987:213). Levinson (1979) examines this phenomenon more systematically by introducing the concept of activity type, which he defines as a ‘‘systematic set of constraints on language usage governing the roles and functions that language is expected to play within specific kinds of social activity’’ (1979:365). The notion of activity type complements Grice’s theory of conversational implicatures (1975) and facilitates the interpretation of off-record requests. Every activity type comes with ‘‘a corresponding set of inferential schemata’’ (1979:371) which constrain the range of meanings that can be inferred by the participants to that activity. A family member expressing interest in the whereabouts of a utensil shared at the dinner table is likely to want to use it, while a child stating that a certain object routinely used to consume food is missing is likely to need this object to proceed with the activity at hand. 4.2.3. Conventionally indirect requests So far we have looked at request forms used by children who were served food by their parents. They got to choose which of the elements of a meal they would like and how much food they eat -- but the meal was prepared and served by the parents. In the following three extracts, children and parents sit together at the dinner table, which is covered with numerous little plates containing different foods, such as cheese, ham, eggs, tomatoes, butter and sliced bread. While all items are equally available to all family members, not all can be reached easily by everybody, so that requests for various items are frequently uttered and plates are constantly passed across the table. Hence, in a way, although all the requests analysed in this paper are requests for food items during family mealtimes, this setting seems to differ in terms of the activity type the family members are engaged in. Rather than being served and fed, the children are responsible for their own sandwiches and take part in the social activity of having dinner on the same terms as the adult participants. And it is in this setting that conventionally indirect requests are used.

78

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

Extract 12, Mother, Bolek (9) 01 BOL: ! podasz mi mamusiu wędlinkę? pass.PFV.2SG. me mother.DIM.VOC meat.DIM.ACC Will you pass me the meat, mummy? 02 MO:

bardzo proszę (( passes the plate with meat)) very please There you go.

The request uttered by 9-year old Bolek is an interrogative construction, containing two diminutives: with the mother, who is explicitly addressed, as well as the requested object being in the diminutive. Such a dense use of diminutive forms seems, on the one hand, consistent with their central role in minimising the imposition of requests in Polish postulated by Wierzbicka (1985); on the other, the first diminutive is a term of endearment, used across all contexts by the children (as well as the parents, who generally address their children in the diminutive). Similarly, in extract 13 below, Iza formulates a request by using a conditional form of the modal verb mo´c (can), with the requested object in the diminutive. Extract 13, Mother, Iza (7), Bolek (9) 01 IZA: ! mogłabym dostac´ pomidorka? can.COND.F get.INF.PFV tomato.DIM.GEN Could I get a tomato? 02 MO: 03 BOL:

tak [oczywis´cie Yes, of course [oczywis´cie Of course

04 MO:

((lifts a plate))

05 BOL:

((BOL takes it and passes it to IZA))

06 MO:

bardzo proszę very please There you go.

Unlike the other request forms in the data, this interrogative construction, which resembles a request for permission, receives a confirming response before the request is complied with. This seems to indicate that this request type, to some extent, retains its dual illocutionary force, in that it is treated as a question and a request (Searle, 1975). The confirming response is provided by both the mother and the older brother, which, in turn, could be interpreted as reflecting the fact that no specific addressee was selected through the use of an address form (compare extracts 12 and 14). The requested object is then jointly passed to Iza by the mother and Bolek, who sits between the two, and accompanied by the usual proszę. The stronger reliance on address forms and the possibility of multiple addressees seem to reveal another systematic difference between the activity of ‘having dinner’ and that of ‘feeding the children’ as in the latter context, all requests were understood as being directed at the parents. The modal verb mo´c was also used to hedge the previously discussed performative request format including the verb poprosic´, as illustrated in extract 14, where mo´c is again used in the conditional. Extract 14, Mother, Iza (7) 01 IZA: ! mamo mogłabym poprosic´ o paprykę mum.VOC can.COND.F ask.INF.PFV about pepper.ACC Mum, could I get a pepper? ?

02 ILO:

ehem, bardzo proszę (( passes the plate with peppers)) ehem, very please Uhm, there you go.

Although the form used by Iza here contains a performative verb, the addition of a modal verb makes her request very similar to formats classified as conventionally indirect in politeness research.

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

79

Previous studies of children’s requests have concluded that request forms containing the modal verb can are used when compliance is not assumed (Gordon and Ervin-Tripp, 1984; Wootton, 2005). In the above examples, however, it seems that the children opt for more elaborate request forms because, rather than being served or fed by their parents, they are treated as equals. Since they are positioned as independent individuals by being made responsible for their own sandwiches, they seem to be positioning themselves as adults by using conventionalised negative politeness, such as interrogative constructions, modal verbs and hedged performatives. Taking part in an ‘adult’ meal seems to place the children in a category-bound activity (Sacks, 1992) requiring them to perform certain actions expressed through particular language forms for them to be recognizable members of a given category or social group. 5. Discussion and conclusion This paper has examined how a group of Polish children request and obtain objects at the dinner table. The children have produced a wide range of request forms across all levels of in/directness. Since all requests were used under similar contextual conditions, i.e. directed at parents, during mealtimes, for similar objects and with a similar purpose, the high variability in the data contradicts the systematic correlation between variables such as social power and distance and strategy choice postulated by pragmatic frameworks. The children’s use of indirect forms did not correlate with high imposition or low entitlement -- nor were highly indirect, off-record forms treated any differently from direct ones. Despite the strong preference for imperatives reported in previous literature on Polish requests, and the parents’ heavy use of imperative constructions, imperatives were rather marginal in the children’s speech. When they were used, they seemed to express a sense of urgency, which was also reflected in the responses they received. The children did, however, opt for direct forms in over half of the cases. The most frequent among them was the want statement, which is not surprising if one considers that the children were constantly being asked what they want and how much they want to eat. While imperatives and want statements have been widely discussed in previous literature on children’s requests, the various forms derived from the performative verb prosic´ found in my Polish data provide new insights into requesting behaviour in a family context. The form poproszę was used in two different ways in the data -- as a form initiating an action, combined with a noun phrase naming the desired object, and as a response to an offer. The imperfective form proszę, on the other hand, was used repeatedly by the parents when providing an object. Although performative forms are similar to imperatives and want statements in terms of illocutionary transparency, which is why they are all regarded as direct, on-record requests, in Polish they also differ from the other direct forms in that they are much more formal and polite. What the imperatives, want statements and performatives found in the data have in common, though, is that the parents often responded to all these request forms by referring to the requested object as something that the children want, confirming their role as providers responsible for attending to their children’s needs. The off-record requests formulated by the children in the present data seem to function in a similar way to direct requests; and they receive similar responses to those following imperatives, such as confirmations that the requested object will be provided. Thus, the way off-record requests were used in my data contradicts definitions that see them as cognitively demanding and highly face-saving. Rather than involving a long inferential path increasing the optionality for the hearer, they were used in highly routinised, recurrent contexts, where they were neither ambiguous nor particularly polite. What seems problematic about the way off-record requests have been conceptualised in pragmatics is that they are not tied to any specific grammatical or lexical forms and are fully dependent on context. At the same time, there has not been sufficient recognition that it is the context in which they are uttered that determines the length of the ‘inferential path’ and the illocutionary transparency of the request; and it is through the recurrence of contexts that certain forms become transparent and conventionalised. Hence, rather than representing three different levels of directness, the requests found in the present data seem to fall into two categories, with direct and off-record requests forming one category and conventionally indirect requests the other one. And there appear to be two main, partly related, factors underlying the choice of these categories: activity type and age. With the youngest children being as young as two, the use (or non-use) of some of the forms is likely to be age-related, though the study did not involve a sufficient number of children to be able to generalise about their pragmatic development. The data do show clearly, however, that want statements, imperatives and off-record requests -- in the form of ‘problem statements’ -- were more popular with younger children. Performative constructions were used by children as young as three when making requests, though only by the older children when responding to offers. Similarly, 3-year olds used interrogative constructions, but requests with modal verbs (including hedged performatives) were only used by children aged six and older (see Table 1).

80

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

One could argue that want statements and performative requests are equally easy to produce as the verb form remains constant across requests, only requiring the speaker to add the required noun (in the appropriate case). Imperatives may be regarded as more complex as they involve different verbs, though in the case of object requests, the verb is likely to be daj (give). Off-record requests, on the other hand, can consist of statements voicing a need; and the speaker (a young child, in particular) may not even be aware of what solution will remedy the problem -- or even that they are making a request. The fact that conventionally indirect requests with modal verbs and hedged performatives were used exclusively by older children does show that they involve fairly complex structures that the younger children were not yet able to produce. Age does not, however, explain why the older children made use of the full range of request forms in the data. It seems that the different request forms used by the children reflect two different contexts; one characterised by dependence and one by autonomy. The former consists in feeding or providing food for children, with adults as givers and children as dependent receivers signalling absences and needs. This is done by means of imperatives, want statements, simple performatives and contextually rich off-record requests. The latter involves all family members sharing a meal at a table and preparing their own food. And while the younger children were not yet able to participate in the second activity, the older ones participated in both. The greater autonomy enjoyed by the children when sharing a meal is reflected in their language use since participating in an ‘adult’ dinner has resulted in the use of conventionally indirect forms and modal verbs. There is evidence in the data that this type of dinner is a relatively novel activity for the children participating in it. For instance, a recurrent topic during those dinners is which of the foods available on the table has already been consumed and which of them will be used for the next sandwich. There is also evidence that the children may not yet be fully aware of the constantly changing contingencies involved in requesting items from other members of the family while they are also having dinner. Picking the right moment to ask for a plate to be passed or deciding whether one should ask or just reach for an item are further aspects of the process of requesting and transferring objects that are certainly worth investigating. This study has also contributed to research on children’s socialisation and provided a more ‘positive’ perspective on the concept of child agency. While studies on requests produced during family mealtimes increasingly focus on parental strategies of getting the children to eat, and children’s strategies of resistance and negotiations of autonomy, this study has looked at how Polish children ask for food at the dinner table. It has illustrated how children who are granted more autonomy take responsibility for their meals and display communicative competence at the dinner table. Their use of conventionally indirect requests seems not so much to orient to other participants’ face needs, but to display good manners; with their polite behaviour at the dinner table categorising them as competent members of their society. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, as well as Jörg Zinken and Giovanni Rossi for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. All remaining errors and inaccuracies are, of course, mine. Appendix Scale of in/directness (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989:18, examples altered): Direct Strategies 1. Mood derivable 2. Explicit performatives 3. Hedged performatives 4. Obligation statements 5. Want statements

Clean the kitchen. I’m asking you to clean the kitchen. I’d like to ask you to clean the kitchen. You’ll have to clean the kitchen. I really wish you’d clean the kitchen.

Conventionally indirect strategies 6. Suggestory formulae How about cleaning up? 7. Query preparatory Could you clean the kitchen, please? Non-conventionally indirect strategies (hints) 8. Strong hints You have left the kitchen in a right mess. 9. Mild hints The kitchen looks rather dirty, doesn’t it?

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

81

References Aronsson, Karin, Cekaite, Asta, 2011. Activity contracts and directives in everyday family politics. Discourse Soc. 22 (2), 137--154. Aronsson, Karin, Gottzén, Lucas, 2011. Generational positions at a family dinner: food morality and social order. Lang. Soc. 40 (4), 405--426. Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, 1987. Indirectness and politeness in requests: same or different? J. Pragmat. 11 (2), 131--146. Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, 1990. You don’t touch lettuce with your fingers: parental politeness in family discourse. J. Pragmat. 14 (2), 259--288. Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, 1997. Dinner Talk. Cultural Patterns of Sociability and Socialization in Family Discourse. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Publishers, Mahwah, NJ. Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Olshtain, Elite, 1984. Requests and apologies: a cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns. Appl. Linguist. 5, 176--213. Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, House, Juliane, Kasper, Gabriele (Eds.), 1989. Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Ablex, Norwood, NJ. Bock, J. Kathryn, Hornsby, Mary, 1981. The development of directives: how children ask and tell. J. Child Lang. 8 (1), 151--163. Brown, Roger, Gilman, Albert, 1989. Politeness theory and Shakespeare’s four major tragedies. Lang. Soc. 18, 159--213. Brown, Penelope, Levinson, Stephen, 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Clancy, Patricia M., 1986. The acquisition of communicative style in Japanese. In: Schieffelin, B.B., Ochs, E. (Eds.), Language Socialization Across Cultures. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 213--250. Cook-Gumperz, Jenny, Kyratzis, Amy, 2003. Child discourse. In: Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D., Hamilton, H. (Eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Blackwell Publishing, BlackwellReference Online: http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/tocnode.html? id=g9780631205968_chunk_g978063120596831 (accessed 19.06.14). Craven, Alexandra, Potter, Jonathan, 2010. Directives: entitlement and contingency in action. Discourse Stud. 12 (4), 419--442. Curl, Traci, Drew, Paul, 2008. Contingency and action: a comparison of two forms of requesting. Res. Lang. Soc. Interact. 41 (2), 129--153. Dixon, Sally, 2015. Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!: Object requests, ownership and entitlement in a children’s play session J. Pragmat. 82, 39--51. Ervin-Tripp, Susan, 1976. Is Sybil there? Some American English directives. Lang. Soc. 5, 25--66. Ervin-Tripp, Susan, 1977. Wait for me roller-skate. In: Mitchell-Kernan, C., Ervin-Tripp, S. (Eds.), Child Discourse. Academic Press, New York, pp. 165--188. Ervin-Tripp, Susan, Guo, Jiansheng, Lampert, Martin, 1990. Politeness and persuasion in children’s control acts. J. Pragmat. 14 (2), 307--331. Goffman, Erving, 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-face Interaction. Garden City, New York. Goodwin, Marjorie Harness, 2006. Participation, affect, and trajectory in family directive/response sequences. Text Talk 26 (4/5), 515--543. Goodwin, Marjorie Harness, Cekaite, Asta, 2013. Calibration in directive/response sequences in family interaction. J. Pragmat. 46 (1), 122--138. Gordon, David, Ervin-Tripp, Susan, 1984. The structure of children’s requests. In: Schiefelbusch, R.L., Pickar, J. (Eds.), The Acquisition of Communicative Competence. University Park Press, Baltimore, pp. 295--322. Grice, Paul, 1975. Logic and conversation. In: Cole, P., Morgan, J.L. (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Speech Acts. Academic Press, New York, pp. 41--58. Heinemann, Trine, 2006. ‘‘Will you or can’t you?’’ Displaying entitlement in interrogative requests. J. Pragmat. 38, 1081--1104. Hepburn, Alexa, Potter, Jonathan, 2010. Threats: power, family mealtimes, and social influence. Br. J. Soc. Psychol. 50 (1), 99--120. Huls, Erica, van Wijk, Carel, 2012. The development of a directive repertoire in context: A case study of a Dutch speaking young child. J. Pragmat. 44 (1), 83--103. James, Sharon, 1978. Effect of listener age and situation on the politeness of children’s directives. J. Psycholinguist. Res. 7 (4), 307--317. Jefferson, Gail, 1984. Transcription notation. In: Atkinson, J., Heritage, J. (Eds.), Structures of Social Interaction. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. ix--xvi. Kent, Alexandra, 2012. Compliance, resistance and incipient compliance when responding to directives. Discourse Stud. 14 (6), 711--730. Leech, Geoffrey, 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. Longman, New York. Levinson, Stephen C., 1979. Activity types and language. Linguistics 17 (5--6), 365--400. Lindström, Anna, 2005. Language as social action: A study of how senior citizens request assistance with practical tasks in the Swedish home help service. In: Hakulinen, A., Selting, M. (Eds.), Syntax and Lexis in Conversation: Studies on the Use of Linguistic Resources in Talk-inInteraction. Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 209--230. Lubecka, Anna, 2000. Requests, Invitations, Apologies and Compliments in American English and Polish. A Cross-Cultural Communication Perspective. Księgarnia Akademicka, Krako´w. Mandelbaum, Jenny, 2014. How to do things with requests: Request sequences at the family dinner table. In: Drew, P., Couper-Kuhlen, E. (Eds.), Requesting in Social Interaction. Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 215--242. Marcjanik, Małgorzata, 1997. Polska Grzecznos´c´ Językowa [Polish Linguistic Politeness]. WSP, Kielce. Ochs, Elinor, Taylor, Carolyn, 1992. Family narrative as political activity. Discourse Soc. 3 (3), 301--340. Ogiermann, Eva, 2009a. Politeness and in-directness across cultures: a comparison of English, German, Polish and Russian requests. J. Politeness Res. 5 (2), 189--216. Ogiermann, Eva, 2009b. On Apologising in Negative and Positive Politeness Cultures. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Read, Barbara, Cherry, Louise, 1978. Preschool children’s production of directive forms. Discourse Process. 1 (3), 233--245. Rossi, Giovanni, 2012. Bilateral and unilateral requests: the use of imperatives and mix? Interrogatives in Italian. Discourse Process. 49, 426--458. Rossi, Giovanni, 2015. Responding to pre-requests: the organisation of hai x ‘do you have x’ sequences in Italian. J. Pragmat. 82, 5--22. Sacks, Harvey, 1992. In: Jefferson, Gail (Ed.), Lectures on Conversation, vol. 1. Blackwell, Oxford. Schegloff, Emanuel A., 1990. On the organization of sequences as a source of ‘‘coherence’’ in talk-in-interaction. In: Dorval, B. (Ed.), Conversational Organization and its Development. Ablex, Norwood, NJ, pp. 51--77. Searle, John R., 1975. Indirect speech acts. In: Cole, P., Morgan, J.L. (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics. Speech Acts. Academic Press, New York, pp. 59--82. Sifianou, Maria, 1997. Politeness and off-record indirectness. Int. J. Sociol. Lang. 126, 163--180.

82

E. Ogiermann / Journal of Pragmatics 82 (2015) 67--82

Slugoski, Ben, Turnbull, William, 1988. Cruel to be kind and kind to be cruel: Sarcasm, banter and social relations. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 7, 101--121. Wierzbicka, Anna, 1985. Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts. Polish vs. English. J. Pragmat. 9, 145--178. Wootton, Anthony, 1997. Interaction and the Development of Mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Wootton, Anthony, 2005. Interactional and sequential configurations informing request format selection in children’s speech. In: Hakulinen, A., Selting, M. (Eds.), Syntax and Lexis in Conversation: Studies on the Use of Linguistic Resources in Talk-in-interaction. Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 185--208. Wootton, Anthony, 2014. Two request forms of four year olds. In: Drew, P., Couper-Kuhlen, E. (Eds.), Requesting in Social Interaction. Benjamins, Amsterdam. (first published in 1981), pp. 215--242. (first published in 1981). Zinken, Jörg, 2015. Contingent control over shared goods. ‘Can I have x’ as a practice for requesting material objects. J. Pragmat. 82, 23--38. Zinken, Jörg, Ogiermann, Eva, 2011. How to propose an action as objectively necessary: The case of Polish trzeba x (‘‘one needs to x’’). Res. Lang. Soc. Interact. 44 (3), 263--287. Zinken, Jörg, Ogiermann, Eva, 2013. Responsibility and action: invariants and diversity in requests for objects in British English and Polish interaction. Res. Lang. Soc. Interact. 46 (3), 256--276. Eva Ogiermann is Lecturer in English Language and Applied Linguistics at King’s College London. Her work in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics investigates culture-specific perceptions and conceptualisations of politeness in English, German, Polish and Russian. More recently, she has been working with video-recordings of English, Polish and English/Polish families. Her publications include a monograph on apologising (Benjamins, 2009) and articles in: Journal of Pragmatics, Intercultural Pragmatics, Journal of Politeness Research, Multilingua, and Research on Language and Social Interaction.