A Pragmatic Study On Refusals Of The Young Chinese

Speech Act is an important research field in pragmatics, among which the speech act of refusal is very special, for it may pose an inherent threat to addressee's face. Accordingly, many face-saving strategies will be expected to be used to minimize the negative effects of the FTA. The study tries to explore the features of refusal strategies used by modern Chinese young students and the relationship between the choice of strategies and the context within the framework of Austin and Searle's Speech Acts Theory, Brown and Levinson's FTA,Grice's Conversational Implicature as well as Politeness Principle by Leech and Gu Yueguo.The data collected by means of a written discourse completion test, which consists of 12 specific situations where the choices are made to perform refusals, involving speakers of equal or unequal status and different social distance. The subjects comprise two groups: 50 boy students and 50 girl students from Zhejiang Ocean University. Refusal responses from the questionnaire are classified according to different refusal strategies and analyzed across the two groups.The findings show that there exist similarities as well as significant differences between males and females when they act refusals.Firstly, both groups prefer indirect refusal strategies rather than the direct ones.Secondly, both groups prefer the strategies of reason, statement of alternative and regret.Thirdly, females utilize more indirect and implicit strategies to protect the hearer's face, while males tend to employ truthful, direct and explicit strategies.Fourthly, directness tends to rise with increase in familiarity.It is hoped the study will shed some light on the teaching and learning of refusal in the Chinese context.