Investigating the Effect of the Addressee’s Social Dominance on Type and Number of Request Strategies Employed by Adolescent and Young Female Sarhaddi Balochi Speakers

The adressee’s social dominance as well as the age of the subjects are among the factors influencing the use of type and number of request strategies by the speakers of any language. The purpose of the present research is to study the effect of the adressee’s social dominance on the type and number of request strategies employed by adolescent and young female Balochi Sarhaddi speakers based on the components of Blum-Kalka, House and Kasper's (1989) Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project model. Research data were collected from 60 female subjects through discourse completion test and role play. In this regard, all request strategies employed were identified, coded, described and then analyzed by Chi-square test. The results showed there was not a significant relationship in the use of type and number of strategies in DCT and role play between the addressee´s social dominance and the age of the subjects (except when the interlocutors have equal status). Moreover, the most commonly used types of strategies were pronouns, hedged performatives, grounders, and politeness markers. Also, increasing the addressee's social dominance towards the speaker resulted in using more complicated strategies by the subjects. Furthermore, new strategies such as saying "Mashaalla", "swearing" and "complimenting" were used by the subjects. Therefore, the research findings contribute to the explanation of universal and specific cross cultural-linguistic strategies based on the research model.