Children’s Production and Comprehension of Politeness in Requests

Abstract

This study investigated the production and comprehension of requests by 10-year-old children with and without hostile-aggressive and anxious-fearful behavior problems. A representative sample of 100 children completed tasks involving the production and comprehension of politeness in requests. The results from the production task showed that when the children were explicitly asked to ask politely they primarily used “please” to indicate politeness, whereas face-saving politeness was marked by the use of question directives and hints. Children with hostile-aggressive and comorbid behavior problems were less likely than comparison group children to use question directives and hints in some social contexts, whereas children with anxious-fearful behavior problems were the same as the comparison group. The results of the comprehension task showed that children without behavior problems were more likely to judge nonpolite requests (which did not contain any politeness features) to be effective, compared with children with behavior problems.