A Study of the Adjustment of the Request Perspectives by Chinese Natives and L2 Chinese Learners and Its Influencing Factors

This study adopts role play tasks in stuff-borrowing scenarios and retrospective interviews to investigate the influence of power(P), social distance(D), and L2 proficiency on the Chinese request perspectives chosen by Chinese natives(CN) and English-speaking advanced learners of L2 Chinese(AL). The results show that (1) Chinese balances between speaker-oriented perspective(SP) and hearer-oriented perspective(HP). For CN, HP is more intimate than SP, but SP is politer than HP. CN employs perspective mainly to mark the social distance: HP marks the -D relation, while SP marks the +D relation. (2) The Chinese interlanguage of AL shows an overall SP tendency which is not significantly changed by distance and power. This indicates that AL is probably influenced by L1 pragmatic transfers. (3) AL’s request perspective develops unevenly across various levels of distance and power. Their acquisition level is generally higher in +D and +P scenarios, lower in -D and =P scenarios. This uneven development can be explained from two perspectives: First, the distribution and frequency of the Chinese request input and output of the international students in China and second, the primary source from which their Chinese request output receives negative feedback or explicit correction.