A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of the Use of 'Please' in American Academic English

‘禮貌’之使用爲保持良好人際關係之重要因素。Brown及Levinson(1987: 240)認定‘禮貌’爲跨文化及語言之重要用法。過去許多學者指出英文中'please'常被使用爲禮貌用語(Quirk, 1985; Brown and Levinson, 1987; Biber et al., 1999; Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999; Crystal, 2004)及命令用語。(Levinson, 1983; Huddleston & Geoffrey, 2002; Crystal, 2004; Wichmann, 2004)。Wichmann(2004)研究'pleas'於ICE GB英國語語料庫中之使用頻率。本研究以美式英語語語料庫中'Please'之用法與之作比較。研究及比較結果發現'please'的用法與性別、學術角色、社會距離及語言事件有極大關聯性。

關鍵字

請；禮貌；語言用語；禮貌用語

並列摘要

The practice of 'politeness', commonly considered an important aspect of the maintenance of good relationships, has been identified by Brown and Levinson (1987: 240) as being 'universal' to all cultures and languages. Several scholars have observed that this word operates as a politeness marker (Quirk, 1985; Brown and Levinson, 1987; Biber et al., 1999; Celce-Murcia & Larsen- Freeman, 1999; Crystal, 2004) and as a request marker (Levinson, 1983; Huddleston & Geoffrey, 2002: Crystal. 2004; Wichmann, 2004). Wichmann (2004 studied the uses of 'please' in British English in relation to the occurrences in the ICE GB Corpus (the British Contribution to the International Corpus of English). With reference mainly to data extracted from an academic American English Corpus, MICASE, this paper attempts to replicate the first part of Wichmann's study in relation to uses of 'please' in American academic English settings. In this study, differences in the use of 'please' were found to relate to gender, academic roles, social distance, and speech events. Some of the differences between the findings of this study and that of Wichmann (2004) are discussed.