SOME SOCIOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF REQUESTS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The article deals with the speech act of request, ways of expressing requests in the English language (British and American) and the sociolinguistic factors that determine speakers' preferences in the choice of request formulas. Requests are viewed as highly frequent speech acts characterized by a high degree of the ranking of imposition that is why indirectness is an indispensable feature of this speech act. A taxonomy of direct and indirect requests (conventional and non-conventional) is drawn up by the author based on thorough analysis of modern authentic sources (fiction and TV series). The most widespread in colloquial English (British and American) are conventional indirect requests among which the following are noteworthy: obligation and necessity utterances, suggestion formulas, ability/possibility utterances, appeals to willingness, want utterances and references to memory and awareness. Frequencies of different request formulas are compared for superior, subordinate and equal speakers, males and females. The distance between the communicants is also considered. Considerable attention is given in the article to hedging which is perceived as a compensatory communicative strategy aimed at attenuating the negative impact to the interlocutors' faces. The use of hedging devices by superior, subordinate and equal speakers (males and females) in different communicative situations is illustrated with ample examples.