Safety first: pre- (and pre-pre-) requests

In some cases, particularly where the nature of a request is sensitive, the threat to the face of the addressee, and potentially also that of the speaker in the event of a refusal, is perceived to be significant enough for the speaker to wish to avoid making the request directly. In such circumstances pre-sequences are common, allowing all parties to save face.

The question ‘Are you doing anything on Saturday night?’, for example, looks like a simple request for information, but may in practice mean ‘I’m working my way up to asking you out on a date’. It therefore functions as a pre-request, protecting both parties’ face by enabling them if needs be to maintain that no actual invitation was ever made: the response ‘Yes, I’m busy with my drama rehearsal’, for example, directly answers the question posed and allows the (positive) face-threatening ‘I don’t actually want to go out with you’ to be avoided.

But in the same way as ‘polite’ requests using conditional structures have become conventionalized, so pre-requests like the one above are in some cases equally transparent, and addressees will respond to them as if they were in fact direct requests (‘I’m sorry, but I’m very busy’). It is not uncommon, therefore, for the conversationally wary to resort to pre-pre-requests for additional face protection:

Steve: I guess you must get bored of an evening, now that your boyfriend’s been sent to prison? (pre-pre-request)

Paula: Well, yes, now you mention it the evenings do drag on a bit.

Steve: Are you doing anything this evening? (pre-request)

Paula: I don’t think so…

Steve: Would you like to come to the cinema with me? (request)

Pre-sequences like these illustrate the complexity of conversation structure, a focus of scholarly attention in the branch of linguistic study known as conversational analysis, founded in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and associated notably with the sociologists Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson.