“Got a Quarter?”: A Descriptive Study on Street Solicitation for Money

초록

This small-scale study takes a systematic look at street solicitation in Manhattan, New York City, from the speech act perspective. The data consisted of 50 requests from 50 different people asking for money on the streets of Manhattan, mostly in the Upper West Side area near Broadway, over a period of two months. The requests were classified according to different strategy types used by each solicitor. They were then analyzed in terms of different levels of directness as well as politeness. The results revealed that street solicitation is characterized differently from the general speech act of requests by a number of identifiable features including brevity, informality, deference, and indirectness. The differences are discussed in light of the social, cultural, situational, and interactional constraints which are typically associated with street solicitation for money.

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