Huma Iqbal2025-11-222025-11-222018https://escholar.umt.edu.pk/handle/123456789/11821Based on the examples from naturally-occurring data collected from Pathan salesmen’s speech, the study investigates the communicative act of request used to achieve the effect of persuasion. Request has been analyzed on the basis of linguistic strategies and the level of directness. The examination of request is based on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theoretical framework of face work on threatening acts and Trosborg’s request strategies (1995) employed to investigate the level of speech directness of Pathan salesmen based in Lahore’s two busy markets.The data was collected randomly from Pathan salesmen working in Lahore to show an unbiased representation of the group. The result reveals that the speech of Pathan salesmen exhibit culture-specific preferences for lexical down graders (address terms) to soften the illocutionary force of the request and, thus, reducing the threat to the hearer’s face. Frequent use of imperatives with a culturally specific linguistic code (kinship term) were employed to mitigate the effect of direct request.The study contributes to the field of discourse construction where the ability of Pathan salesmen to use certain linguistic code and elements to combine into utterances is demonstrated. This study could be utilized to train salesmen in marketing discourse by looking into the pros and cons of their interaction with the customers.enThesis