Request Strategies: A Comparative Study of English Business Emails Written by Iranian and Chinese Business People

With the globalization of business, understanding communication across languages is becoming progressively more important. This survey tended to compare 100 English business emails written by Chinese with100 English business emails written by Iranian business people concerning the category of request they utilized in their business correspondence based on the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) scheme developed by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984). The results manifested that both Iranian and Chinese business people utilized Mood derivable as the most favored strategies in their emails. Moreover, in both data sets, the researchers observed that approximately 80% of the total percentage of all the requests laid in the category of Direct Requests. This stands out against the previous findings in relation to non- native speakers of English. However, the results of the study could have some implications for ESP practitioners too.