The Linguistic Behaviour of Street Children in Yemen: Their Requests and Apologies

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the linguistic behaviour of street children in Taiz regarding two speech acts: requests and apologies. The researcher interviewed 39 children to investigate the extent to which the social background of the street children influences their linguistic behaviour. The researcher gave the children 10 situations and asked them to produce the speech acts in question. For both requests and apologies, the children showed sensitivity to the features of the situations, and chose the appropriate strategy accordingly. Among main request strategies, the researcher found that street children preferred the most direct strategy type. They also made their requests without modifications. The study revealed that the children used socially unacceptable swear words. In apologizing, street children preferred a simple straightforward apology and they also showed a high sense of responsibility in committing an offence. The study gives suggestions for future research.