The act of communication is one of establishing, building, and maintaining relationships. Therefore, understanding communicative norms of a particular socio-cultural group is crucial for successful interactions. As our societies increasingly diversify and globalize, skillful and effective communicators who navigate sensitively and appropriately through interpersonal, intracultural, and intercultural encounters are essential for peaceful and productive communities.

The present study seeks to better understand effective communication in intercultural contexts by employing speech act theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1969) which is housed in the field of pragmatics. Focusing on the speech act of requesting, it asks if German-English bilinguals differentiate their communicative strategies depending on the language they use. Completing an oral discourse completion task with six fictive scenarios situated at a professional workplace environment, fourteen participants recorded requests as response to the scenarios, in German and in English. Preliminary analysis suggests that the bilinguals realize requests differently, depending on the language they use. In German, they tend to be more direct and use more imperatives. In English, they choose less direct preparatory queries. Results will be discussed considering culture-specific conventions of politeness marking as means of effective communication. The preliminary finding suggests that participants are aware of the differences regarding the communicative norms of their languages—a crucial aspect of intercultural communicative competence and effective communication.