Directness vs. indirectness: A contrastive analysis of pragmatic equivalence in Spanish and French request formulations

The aim of this paper is to examine the cross-cultural differences between (in)direct Spanish and French request formulations, adopting a pragmatic approach. More specifically, this study focusses on pragmatic equivalences in request formulations in informal and educational contexts, in French and Spanish corpora. In order to do so, a taxonomy was developed, based on the literature and on the analysis of the Spanish and French corpora. The analysis of the data shows that, on the one hand, direct strategies are among the most frequent request formulations in both corpora and, on the other, some formulations are similar in Spanish and in French but that their pragmatic interpretation or their frequency differs.