A Cross-Cultural Sociopragmatic Study On English And Chinese Refusal Strategies

In cross-cultural communication, differences in language use have been noted to be a factor for communication breakdown or pragmatic failure. The differences can be attributed to the ways in which people of a speech community customarily associate forms with meanings. This association could vary across languages and is related to the sociocultural beliefs and values of the speech community. The culture-specificity of language is particularly evident in speech acts.This study investigates similarities and differences of refusal strategy use between Chinese and North American college students and teachers from the perspective of sociopragmatics within the framework of Brown and Levinson's face theory and the speech act theory. Refusal is seen as a face-threatening act, which threatens the hearer's face, accordingly many face-saving strategies will be expected to use. Language data are collected by means of a written discourse completion test (DCT), which consists of eight refusal situations (two requests, two invitations, three offers and one suggestion) involving speakers of equal or unequal status and different social distance. The subjects comprise two groups: 60 Chinese teachers and students in Zhengzhou Institute of Aeronautical Industry Management and 60 North American teachers and students both in China and at Iowa University. Refusal responses from the questionnaire are classified according to different refusal strategies and analyzed across the two groups.This study attempts to find the similarities and differences of refusal strategy use between Chinese and North Americans at the private interpersonal level; the influence of social power and social distance of the interlocutors on the choice of refusal strategies; and implications in cross-cultural communication. The thesis falls into five parts. Chapter One serves as an introduction. Chapter two is the literature review, in which the speech act theory, the previous cross-cultural studies on refusals and different views of politeness are introduced. Chapter three focuses on the research methodology. Chapter four is about the analysis and results of the study. Chapter five...