Polite Requestive Strategies in Emails: An Investigation of Pragmatic Competence of Chinese EFL Learners

This paper is motivated by the premise that little is known about the use of requestive strategies in request emails in Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) context. Specifically, the paper examines and compares requestive strategies in request emails between two groups of university students, namely English majors (EM) and non-English majors (NEM). It then explores whether the assessments of three situational factors: assessments of social distance, power and rank of imposition, either alone or combined, has a statistically significant effect on the choice of requestive strategies by the two groups. In reference to some existing similar research, the paper argues that both groups under study seemed to exhibit inadequate sociopragmatic competence and pragmalinguistic knowledge. The study thus sheds some light on Interlanguage Pragmatics research on the Chinese EFL context. The paper finally offers some pedagogical implications in foreign language settings.