Economical to elaborate and back again?

Abstract This study investigates how L2-Chinese proficiency influences speakers’ sequential organization of requests. Fifty-four L2 Chinese speakers at four proficiency levels and 12 L1 speakers completed two dyadic roleplays about the social action of requesting. Data were analyzed by using Conversation Analysis. We noted that beginner-proficiency L2 speakers adopted an economical approach by placing a request in the sequence-initial position without preliminary moves. Lower-intermediate speakers adopted a more elaborate approach to formatting requests, using prefatory moves such as pauses, hesitation markers, availability checks, pre-pres and more elaborate backgrounds. The upper-intermediate speakers shaped requests more economically by moving much of the background information out of the request. This pattern continued with advanced L2 speakers and L1 speakers by which their requests became increasingly economical, although this was supplemented with context-fitting syntactic structures and mitigation devices. The study concludes with (1) high-level synthesis of interactional evidence of how human prosociality is managed at the interactional level and (2) on-the-ground practical suggestions for the teaching and assessment of requests in Chinese.