Orders and requests in Italian: a study of the perception of native speakers and Brazilian learners

• Autor(a) principal: Spadotto, Luciane Nascimento
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: Santoro, Elisabetta
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: letrônica
• Texto Completo: https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/letronica/article/view/34170
• topic: Orders. Requests. Speech acts. Italian language. Brazilian learners.; Ordens. Pedidos. Atos de fala. Língua italiana. Aprendizes brasileiros.

The aim of the study is to investigate orders and requests in Italian, identifying the elements that characterize and distinguish these two speech acts in the perception of native speakers and Brazilian learners. The data-gathering instrument presented to the informants verbal interactions between native Italian speakers (role plays, recorded in audio and video, and dialogues extracted from cinematographic material), which should be classified as “order” or “request” with a justification for the choice. There was also a third open field (“other”). Analyzing the responses of 40 Italians and 40 Brazilian learners, we found that orders and requests in Italian are differentiated by linguistic structure and contextual elements that involve interaction. The comparison of the results did not reveal significant differences in the classification of the two speech acts by native and Brazilian speakers. However, it was possible to verify that, while Italian informants used more frequently pragmatic and prosodic elements to justify their answers, Brazilian learners’ choices were mostly based on pragmalinguistic aspects.