7.0 Introduction

This chapter asks whether there are any observable relationships between addressees and request realisation. Specifically, this chapter is concerned with the third research question:

To what extent do a child's linguistic devices and request realisation strategies in a second language vary depending upon the addressee?

This chapter deals with Phases II to IV. It excludes the data of Phase I (the first 12 weeks) because the adult addressee in Phase I was different from the adult addressee in the rest of the phases. The adult addressee in Phase I was 19 years old and in a sense both an 'adult' and a 'teenager'. The adult addressee in the remaining phases was 33 years old. The analysis in this chapter also excludes improvised role-play requests in order to maximise homogeneity in the data and to exclude the ambiguity of addressee since a role-play creates a potential ambiguity in the perception by the speaker when addressing a fictional character. Therefore, the chapter involves the following four categories of addressee: Yao's classmates as peers, Hannah as a teenager, Janice as an adult neighbour, and Yao's mother (see data collection procedures in Chapter 3 for details on the addressees).

7.1 Requests with Varying Addressees

Table 7.1 shows the frequencies of requests made to each addressee after Phase I, with the improvised role-plays removed. The total number of requests was 978. The number of requests made to the adult was much smaller than those made to peers and teenagers. This may be a consequence of the adult's being more accommodating than the others. When Yao made requests to Janice, she did not have to negotiate to any great extent, while with her peers and the teenager sometimes second and third requests were needed before compliance was achieved. While Yao's mother was present in every session, she was not actively involved in interaction unless Yao initiated a conversation with her. This contributed to the low frequency of requests made to her mother.