Linguistics; pragmatics; favors.... An LJ-er who prefers to stay anonymous has e-mailed me to ask for a discussion of the rules for requesting favors and responding to such requests, with the following parameters:
1. She's not referring to major items like "Could you loan me five hundred dollars?" or "Could I leave my kids at your house for a week?" -- just requests for routine favors like giving someone a ride to the airport or picking up someone's prescription at a pharmacy ... things that the asker would ordinarily do for himself/herself, but for some reason isn't able (or doesn't feel able) to do in this instance.
2. Her primary interest isn't in how we decide whether to say yes or no to a request for a favor but in questions about how the yes or no should be
worded. For example....
a.
Should you make sure that the person asking for the favor knows exactly how much of a hardship it will be for you to do the favor? Is making that clear to the asker rude ... is it guilt-tripping?
b.
Suppose the request is for something that would be easy or trivial for the asker but would be hard for you to do: Should you explain that to the asker, or it is better to say "No. I'm sorry; I can't do that for you" and let it go at that unless the asker
demands an explanation?
c.
Are there different sets of rules when the asker is (a) a friend, (b) a lover, (c) a spouse/partner, (d) a parent, (e) a child?
d.
Are there ways to word a refusal that will make it less likely to cause hard feelings?
e.
How do you handle it if you say no and the person argues with you about your refusal?
You will have noticed that there's a missing parameter here. The
Favors Grammar is going to be different from one language to another, one dialect to another, one culture to another ... and so on. My guess is that if I asked for these things to be specified, the answer would be roughly "mainstream American English." However, because it seems to me that the discussion would be even more interesting if we had information about the
Favors Grammar for a variety of different languages and dialects and cultures and subcultures, I didn't ask.
Over to you; feel free to propose additional questions...
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Nonfiction online: "How Verbal Self-Defense Works" at
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http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/articlesElginOld.html ;
Religious Language Newsletter archive at
http://www.forlovingkindness.org .
Fiction online: "We Have Always Spoken Panglish" at
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/elgin/elgin1.html ; "What The EPA Don't Know Won't Hurt Them" at
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/epa.htm ; "Weather Bulletin" at
http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Weather.html ; "A Quorum Of Grandmothers" at
http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/QuorumOfGrandmothers.html ;
The Communipaths at
http://www.jackiepowers.com/SuzetteHadenElgin/TheCommunipaths.html . More stuff at
http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/SiteMap.html ; LiveJournal
blog index at
http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=ozarque .