The paper presents the analysis of the speech behavior pattern of REQUEST in Russian and German. In the first part of paper the illocution of REQUEST is defined in terms of Natural Semantic Metalanguage. The contrastive research is carried out from three different angles. Firstly, from the structural viewpoint, main language patterns of the realization of REQUEST are described. Secondly, from the pragmatic viewpoint, it is considered whether and how the situations in which Germans and Russians express REQUEST are different.