The Effect of Entitlement on the Calculation of the Rank of Imposition in University Students' Requests to their Instructors

The present paper examines the relationship between requester's feeling of entitlement and the types of politeness strategies they use. According to Brown and Levinson's model of politeness (1987), speakers choose their preferred super-strategy as well as the complication level of the act based on calculations they perform on the act. These calculations are influenced by three factors, namely, Power(P), Distance(D), and Rank of imposition(R). The first two factors relate to the assumed relationship between the interlocutors during the interaction, and they are easily measured based on the social and contextual factors governing the situation. However, the weight of R can not be accurately measured, and although it is done spontaneously by language users, it cannot be left to the instinctive evaluation of the researcher. Therefore, one factor that is assumed to affect the weight of the imposition, entitlement, is placed under consideration in this research. Using the sociopragamtic approach, the researcher analysed a two-question questionnaire that ask university students to freely discuss what they want from their course instructor (the researcher). The only difference between the two questions is related to the sample's evaluation of their entitlement in the requested acts. In the first question, they were asked to write their rights, while in the second they were asked to write their wishes. The results detected a preference of the NP super-strategy in the respondents' answers regarding what they believed to be entitled to. Moreover, flouting the quantity maxim was an observed pattern in the responses to the question related to their assumed rights. Both findings suggest that entitlement can be manipulated by the speaker to trick the requestee into believing in the requester's right to the requested act, hence, reducing the rank of imposition.