alerterattention getter which is written “Excuse me sir,” that should be written “Excuse me, Sir.”
4.4.2. Female-Male Interactions
All female participant use query preparatory except the eighth participant who prefers use strong hints to the other strategies. In the request perspective, all of
them choose hearer-oriented to convey their request. The other similarity is in modifying their request. The downgraders internal modification in the level of
syntactic level that is interrogative is used by the five female participants. While the latest participant does not use any alerter, the other choose apologetic with
discourse markers to modify their request. “excuse me, Sir” is the participant favorite alerter. Capitalization seems to be a big problem for the participants. As
the participant nine and ten did, the first one wrote “excuse” all in small letter whereas it is the first word in a sentence. That is similar as the latest participant
who uses small letter to begin a name of a street. The realization strategies and the modifications can be best explained by
the following tables.
Table 4.4 The realization strategies used by the participants to respond prompt 4
Partici pants
Request strategies Request Perspective
Direct Conventionally
Indirect Non-
conventionally Indirect
1 M -
- Strong hints
Impersonal 2 M
- -
Strong hints Impersonal
3 M -
Query preparatory -
Hearer-oriented 4 M
- -
Strong hints Speaker-oriented
5 M -
Query preparatory -
Hearer-oriented 6 F
- Query preparatory
- Hearer-oriented
7 F -
Query preparatory -
Hearer-oriented 8 F
- -
Strong hints Hearer-oriented
9 F -
Query preparatory -
Hearer-oriented 10 F
- Query preparatory
- Hearer-oriented
Partici -pants
Modifications Attention
getter Alerter
Internal External
Downgraders Upgraders
Syntactic LexicalPhrasal
1 M Apologetic;
Discourse marker
Interrogative -
- -
2 M Discourse
marker Interrogative
- -
- 3 M
Apologetic; Discourse
marker Interrogative
- -
Getting a precomittment
4 M Discourse
marker Interrogative
- -
Checking on availability
5 M Apologetic;
Discourse marker
Interrogative -
- -
6 F Apologetic;
Discourse marker
Interrogative -
- -
7 F Apologetic;
Discourse marker
Interrogative -
- -
8 F Apologetic;
Discourse marker
Interrogative -
- -
9 F Apologetic;
Discourse marker
Interrogative -
- Disarmer
10 F -
Interrogative -
- -
4.5 Responses to prompt 5