https://www.mdu.se/

The speech act of requesting has attracted a lot of attention in recent research, and previous studies reveal that conventionally indirect request strategies are commonly used by second language (L2) learners. A speaker will generally employ requests regularly, hence the focus on requests strategies in this study. Additionally, difficulties may occur, as a speaker’s request also invites a response. This communication is most likely intended to go as smoothly as possible. The present study aims to investigate the use of request strategies by uppersecondary language learners of English in Sweden. Data were collected through a discourse completion test (DCT), which required that the students produce suitable request strategies for different contexts. These contexts were divided into three categories, varying in levels of social distance, power and status. 30 last-year students answered the DCT. The students’ responses were analysed according to the levels of directness proposed by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) as well as the request perspective of the speech act. The results show that the L2 students favour the conventional indirect strategies when employing addressing requests to friends of equal status, a person of superior status and to a stranger. Thus, based on the low variability of the results, no apparent connections or patterns were found between the respective contexts of the DCT and the participants’ adaption of request strategies. In alignment with the results, it is possible to conclude that the social circumstances have minimal influence on Swedish upper-secondary students’ adaption of request strategies.