Plan: Making Request a day in the Life of a Doctor

Making Request. The Live of a Doctor
Plan:

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   Making Request
   
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   A Day in the Life of a Doctor
   
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   Doctor Job Description Template
   

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Comparison on Making Polite Requests in English and in Chinese
Abstract: Polite requests play an important role in daily communication.
Different culture has various ways of making request. In order to get rid
of misunderstanding, it is necessary to clarify the different polite
expression of making request in diverse culture. This paper chooses to
compare English and Chinese polite request making.
Key words: Politeness; Request; English; Chinese
Introduction
With the development of mass media and information technology,
communicative borders are removed and people become closer and closer.
Therefore, it is necessary to understand the different lifestyles of
various cultural community. However, the main reasons of successful
communication does not only include how well a language is spoken, but also
some personal and cultural elements. When considering social context, non-
verbal communication plays an important role in language learning. A very
interesting topic in this large field is politeness, since forms of
politeness are often misinterpreted and lead to misunderstandings. So I
chose to have a closer look at the differences between politeness in
Chinese and English.
Politeness is known as a courteous manner that displays respects, show
deference in society where people live and communicate together (OED
online). Furthermore, according to Brown and Levinson (1978), politeness
theory is the speaker's expressions use toward receiver in soft manner of
Face Threaten Acts (FTAs) to saving face of addressees. There are four main
strategies in politeness theory as: bald-on record, positive politeness,
negative politeness and off record. Bald- on record, a type is commonly
with people known each other very well and very comfortable in their
environment, is reduce the impact of FTAs. Off record is removing the
speakers from any imposition whatsoever (Zhan, 1992). "Positive politeness
is redress directed to addressee's positive face" (Brown and Levinson,
1978, p.101), while negative politeness is making a request less intrude
into a person's private.
Alternatively, request is a type of speech of act where the speaker ask
or demand from the hearer to perform an act which is for the benefit of the
speaker. A request has two parts: head act and modifiers. Head act is the
main utterance which conveys a complete request and can stand by itself
without any modifiers for express demand. The head act is follow by
modifiers that moderate or exaggerate the impact of the request on the
addressee. For example, "Could I borrow your dictionary, please?" where
"Could I borrow your dictionary" is head act and "please" is modifier.
So, every culture, every language has different ways to making requests
in politeness. Therefore, the scope in this research is compared the
differences expression of politeness requesting in two languages: English
and Chinese. Following to House and Kasper (1981), their research claimed
that speakers prefer to choose negative politeness strategies than positive
politeness because when the relative face threat is high because negative
politeness strategies are easily compensation than positive politeness
strategies. To evaluate the difference of politeness in making request in
two languages English and Chinese, the research will analyse three
difference situations in classroom, at restaurant and at home.
Discussion
In English grammar, in order to make a polite request, people usually
use the modal verbs like can, could, will, would to allow the speaker to
ask their need by asking for or giving permission, and so on. The formation
of making a polite request is: (Leech, Cruickhank, Ivanic, 2001)
Modal Verb (Could/ Can/ Will/ Would) + Subject + Base Verb +.... ?
For example, Can you give a book?
So, in this sentence, "can" is a modal verb, "you" is subject and "give"
is base verb. In Chinese grammar as like as English grammar, speakers use
optatives verbs to express wishes, making a request, and have
permissions. Follow to the grammar rule, the optatives verb put before the
main verb and add"?" - question particle at the end of the sentence: (Wang,
1996)
Or in an affirmative-negative question, the negative adverb should be
put between the optatives verb instead of the main verb: (Wang, 1996)
S + Opt. Verb + ? (Negative Adv.) + Opt. verb + Main Verb + Obj. ?
Additionally, in imperative sentences or interrogative sentences English
is adding the conventional expression "please" to make their requests more
polite and to make soften their utterance text (E.g. Please give me a book!
or Could you give a book, please?) (Leech, Cruickhank, Ivanic, 2001)
On the other hand, Chinese grammar has many strategies to making a request
in politeness by using reduplication of verbs, using