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This study reviews recent contrastive works on speech acts of request between Korean and other languages and analyzes the data collected for the works in order to find commonalities and differences between the languages investigated. The results indicate that speakers in most languages prefer conventionally indirect strategies in requests. The results also demonstrate that people use less imperatives and use more supportive moves when speaking to an interlocutor of higher social position or of significant social distance, or when the imposition of a request is greater. As for differences, Korean speakers tend to use more direct strategies than their German, Spanish, English, and Japanese counterparts although they are less direct in requests than speakers of the Mongolian, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Thai languages. While indirectness is considered closely associated with politeness in language, this study argues that the Korean honorific, a distinctive mechanism of politeness realization, should be taken into consideration in determining how polite an utterance is.
