A sociolinguistic focus on the requests uttered by Maltese children

Abstract

This thesis sets out to investigate the different request strategies employed by Maltese children in different social contexts. The aim is to find out whether and how Maltese children adapt their requests, which are many times considered as an inherently face-threatening act, to different speakers. The researcher explores children's knowledge of the social dynamics at play in every day conversations and how this social awareness is reflected in the way they formulate their requests. The focus is on linguistic politeness and communicative competence as the following questions are tackled: Do children use imperatives, declaratives or interrogatives in their requests? Are they direct or indirect? What about the use of politeness markers, do they use "please" more frequently than "jekk joghgbok"? How do they address the person to whom they are making their request? How do they adapt (if they do adapt!) according to the distance, age and status of the other interactant? The study was carried out by means of a cross-sectional analysis, as the reseacher examined the speech of 120 children coming from all over Malta and who are between 5 and 12 years old by means of a face-to-face questionnaire and a discourse completion test (DCT). All the data was then analysed and discussed in terms of the social variables related to gender and age, as the participants were categorised into three age groups (5- 7 years, 8-9 years and 10- 12 years). The findings of this study reveal that these participants, including those coming from the youngest age group, are aware of the social dynamics at work when addressing requests to different hearers. However, usually girls and those belonging to the oldest age group were the ones, who through the claims made in the questionnaire and the requests uttered in the DCT, can be perceived as being more aware of the weight of social variables and the face work that needs to be done to reduce the costs of the speech act of requesting with the various addressees.