Politeness in Mexican Spanish and Japanese: Verb Forms as Mitigators in High Imposition Requests in L1 and L2
Year: 2025
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Intercultural pragmatic studies analyze learners communicative performance and the pragmatic development of their second language on the basis of their request strategies.In the current study we assessed the use of syntactic downgraders when formulating high-imposition requests in Mexican Spanish and Japanese.We conducted survey questionnaires with native Mexican Spanish and Japanese speakers who are also second language (L2) learners of the other language.Specifically, the subjects were provided with pragmatic situations in which they were asked to select the most appropriate request form in high-imposition requests in either their first language (L1) or L2 language.Six morphosyntactic forms were used in each language and assigned a politeness level from one to six.The first part of the study consisted of a morphosyntactic analysis of the verb forms, focusing on distance and power relationships between the speakers, and mitigation in relation to Brown and Levinson s (1978) positive and negative face concepts.In the second part, native Mexican Spanish and Japanese speakers with a medium to high level of L2 proficiency were asked to complete the questionnaires in both their L1 and L2.The overall results suggest that both cultures appear to follow similar politeness level pragmatic rules, and that the verb mood forms used in Mexican Spanish and Japanese honorific forms correspond to similar pragmatic values.
Author: Aleman-Rodriguez, Monica
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7112193777
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