Three similar experiments were conducted to assess language variation and politeness in the speech of English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children, and in Armenian children learning English as a second language. Each experiment elicited request strategies from the children with the use of puppets in a structured conversation. While the overall trend of the studies showed greater variation ability among native speakers than among second language learners, the difference was statistically significant only between the performance in Spanish and English of native Spanish speakers. Armenians were found to exhibit a significantly lower degree of politeness than other subjects, possibly because of cultural factors. When Spanish-speaking subjects were divided into balanced and non-balanced bilinguals, the balanced group was found to exhibit greater variation and politeness than the non-balanced group. Possible interpretations of these findings are discussed, and a brief bibliography is appended. (JB)