Cross-linguistic analysis of request strategies: examples from Norwegian and Hungarian

Abstract

Previous studies aimed to reveal the pragmatic norms for different request strategies and discourse organisation, considering politeness markers and individual language varieties. This paper proposes further theoretical and empirical exploration of the impact of culture and language-specific grammatical constructions on some informal requesting practices. Investigating asymmetric constructions used by speakers of Hungarian and Norwegian this study examines specific request strategies in the above-mentioned languages that have become widespread in casual conversation in recent years. Whether these structures will persist in these contextual settings remains to be seen. I am mostly concerned with the intercultural perspective, how these phenomena can be interpreted from a non-native speaker’s view.