The use and function of "please" in learners' oral requestive behaviour : a pragmatic analysis

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to focus on “please” as one of the most frequent modifiers used to mitigate the impositive speech act of requesting. However, apart from this main function, scant attention has been paid to the analysis of learners’ use of this device when performing other functions, such as marking the utterance as a directive, begging for cooperative behaviour from the addressee or emphasising what a speaker says. Therefore, the present study investigates the use and function of “please” by Spanish EFL learners engaged in two oral spontaneous tasks eliciting request use. Results show that i) “please” is one of the most frequent modifiers employed by learners when requesting, ii) it is mainly used in its mitigating function, and iii) it is always placed at the end of the request move. Considering these results, pedagogical intervention is suggested by exposing learners to film scenes, a rich source of pragmatic input in foreign language contexts.