Abstract
The main purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of the requester's consideration for the requestee's costs on expressions of request in the Japanese language. Subjects described orally (Experiment 1) or in written form (Experiment 2, 3) what they would say in fictious requesting situations. Experiment 1 showed that when the requests were addressed to an intimate equal-status requestee, subjects employed indirect forms more often as the request size increased. Experiment2 replicated the above results for the requests addressed to a high-status requestee as well. The Experiment 3 showed that subjects used direct forms more in non-serious situations than serious situations either for an equal-status or a high status requestee. The results of three experiments gave ample support to our general prediction that the more the requseter needed to show consideration for the requestee's costs, the more often he/she would use polite (indirect) forms.
