Request Modification Strategies Made by the Korean Speakers of Thai in comparison to the Native Speakers of Thai

Abstract

This research focuses on the request modifications used by the L2 Korean learners of Thai and the Thai native speakers. The study groups consist of 25 Korean learners of Thai and 25 Thai native speakers. The research tool used in this study is the Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The results show that the Korean speakers use  17 types of external request modifications, namely,  Grounder,  Alerter, Apology,  Small talk, Promise, Gratitude, Checking on availability, Sweetener, Paralinguistic cues, Plea, Appealer, Blessing, Consultative device, Cost-minimizer, Presupposition, Rhetorical question, and Threatening. However, the Thai native speakers used only 13 types of the external request modifications and all of them are the same as those used by the Korean speakers. With regard to the internal request modifications, the study revealed that there are only 2 types of them found in the the Korean speakers’ data, namely, Understater and Conditional structure. In contrast, there are 4 types of them found in the Thai native speakers’ data, namely, Understater, Conditional structure, Downtoner, and Consultative device.

            This study not only presented the request modifications of the speech act of requests made by the L2 Korean learners of Thai and the Thai native speakers but also discussed the interlanguage characteristics of the Korean learners. Finally, the results of study contribute to the study of interlanguage pragmatics in Thai as well as the field of teaching/learning Thai as a second/foreign language.