Indirectness and politeness in Turkish–German bilingual and Turkish monolingual requests

This study focuses on both the realisation and politeness perception of requests made by Turkish monolingual speakers and Turkish–German bilingual returnees. It investigates the possibility that the Turkish–German bilingual returnees’ pragmatic performance may have been affected by pragmatic transfer from German. As an initial step, a discourse completion test (DCT) was administered to Turkish monolinguals and Turkish–German bilingual returnees, in order to elicit requests in 10 different situations. Second, a politeness rating questionnaire was used to measure the perceived politeness of requests in Turkish in order to investigate the relationship between indirectness and politeness. The results of the questionnaire showed that indirectness and politeness are related, but not linearly linked concepts. In regard to indirectness, a cross-cultural comparison revealed that Turkish monolingual speakers seemed to prefer more direct strategies when compared to German speakers. Although the overall results of the DCT did not confirm pragmatic transfer, in some strategies the bilinguals preferred indirectness more than Turkish monolinguals did − a finding which is consistent with the hypothesis that they experienced some influence from German. Furthermore, this study explores the nature of requests beyond the limits of traditional speech act theory. Adopting a broader perspective when analyzing the DCT data (i.e., moving beyond the Blum-Kulka et al. [1989] framework), my study shows that informants employ strategies other than those reported in most studies using DCTs: deliberate choices of opting out, providing alternative solutions, and attempts at negotiation. A re-analysis of the DCT data revealed that in some situations, the Turkish monolinguals tended to be more reluctant to make a request, whereas the Turkish–German bilinguals opted out less frequently, but preferred indirect strategies. Thus, further investigation needs to cover not only the ‘said’, but also the ‘unsaid’ responses of the requestees, in order to shed more light on the issue of indirectness.