Analysis of requests from Italian-speaking students of English and Spanish: reflection on pragmatic strategies in multilingual competence

The objective of this study is to provide empirical data that allows for reflection on the benefits of multilingual competence through the pragmatic analysis of the request strategies used by plurilingual speakers in three languages: Italian L1, Spanish L2 and English L2. Moreover, the present research also attempts to detect whether pragmatic transfer of L1 is found in L2 productions. This is a descriptive study conducted by triangulation of empirical data using qualitative and quantitative methodologies of research from a corpus of e-mails written by Italian university students. The requests formulated in the corpus of e-mails written in L1 and in L2 were studied in order to analyse the types of requests (direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect) and the perspective (sender oriented, receiver oriented, sender and receiver oriented and impersonal) in academic contexts with different social distances. The results of the analysis showed similarities and divergences in the informants' strategies and the presence of pragmatic transfer from L1 in the samples in L2 of both languages.