Please作为表达请求的重要英语日常用语,常被中国学生忽视或误用。本着母语者的真实使用情况应当作为二语教学参考依据的理念,本研究利用Spoken BNC2014语料库,通过log-likelihood、Spearman相关分析和逻辑回归分析,探索性别、年龄和社会阶层等语言外部因素对英国英语母语者please使用频率、句型和句内位置选择的影响。结果发现,在语内,母语者使用疑问句更多搭配句末please,祈使句则搭配句首please;在语外,性别上女性please使用频率更高,而男性更多将please用在祈使句句首,年龄上未成年使用please最多,且偏好在请求中使用please疑问句,社会阶层上中层中产阶层使用please最多。本研究还基于真实语料please的使用位置选择与句型搭配的特点,为please的显性与隐性教学提出方案设计,对中国学生使用英语请求语的能力提升有一定指导意义。

As an important daily word to express requests and politeness, please is often ignored or improperly used by Chinese students due to cultural differences. Based on the idea that the actual use of please by native speakers should be taken as a reference in second language pedagogy, this study analyses data from the Spoken BNC2014. By statistical means including log-likelihood, Spearman correlation and logistic regression, this study explores the effects of gender, age and social class on the frequency of please usage, as well as British English speakers’ choice of sentence type and intra-sentence position. Results show that, intralinguistically, interrogative sentences tend to be paired with sentence-final please; while extralinguistically, females use please more frequently, while males tend to use please in the initial position of imperative sentences; teenagers use please most frequently and prefer to apply interrogative sentences; middle-class speakers use please more frequently than other classes. This study further elicits native English speakers’ choices of please sentential position and sentence type in real life, and proposes a teaching scheme of please explicit and implicit instruction, which shows significance in Chinese students’ pragmatic competence improvement in terms of English request.