A Cross-cultural Comparison Of Chinese And English Refusals

Drawing on a selected script data concerned with the North Korean Nuclear Issues from regular press conferences from January to June, 2007 in China and the US, this paper presents a cross-cultural comparison of the politeness realization of refusals by spokespersons within a modified version of Beebe et al.'s (1990) refusal classification, and accounts for the similarities and differences. That is to address the following three questions:1) What are the strategies employed by the Chinese and American spokespersons to negotiate refusals? 2) What are the similarities and differences between refusals in authentic media discourse and those elicited from simulated scenarios? 3) How can the findings be understood in light of politeness, culture and institutional norms?Refusals are implemented by spokespersons, usually with multiple turns and moves, in response to journalists' questions. Hence, this paper first resorts to discourse analysis and conversation analysis to segment refusal responses and then utilizes 'Pearson Chi-Square', 'Likelihood Ratio' and 'Contingency Coefficient' to evaluate the effects of question types on the selection of refusal strategies. The statistical results show that the question types rarely affect the selection of strategies. The paper then eliminates the variable of question types and cross-culturally compares the refusals.The results show that: The American spokespersons (henceforth, ASs) and Chinese spokespersons (henceforth, CSs) show preference for indirect refusals. However, the former employ a notable number of direct refusals. Furthermore, The ASs employ far more external modifiers than the CSs; the former are more flexible in the selection of refusal strategies than the latter; the former use syntactically longer and more intricate refusal strategies. These findings are consistent with the previous studies. The results also reveal that: The most popular strategy in both data is 'avoidance'. The CSs also favor "unspecific or indefinite reply' and 'statement of attitude or expectation', while the ASs prefer 'statement of alternative', 'asking back'. and 'promise of future acceptance'. The ASs use a fairly large number of adjuncts, which are not found in the Chinese data. Regarding the common mode of politeness, the CSs favor: 'statement of expectation or attitude' plus 'reason' or 'avoidance' (the reverse also occurs); the ASs: 'pause filler' plus 'reason or explanation' followed by 'avoidance'. The above findings are tentatively accounted for in terms of politeness, culture and institutional norms. The preference for indirectness over directness in both data and the frequent use of external modifiers are due to the universal concerns for politeness. The dimensions of Collectivism/Individualism and High-/Low-context between China and the US can explain the findings that the CSs are more indirect and 'economical' in making refusals. In addition, the adversarial character and time limit of press conferences determine 'avoidance' as the most widely used strategy and the Chinese foreign policy in press conferences also contributes to the frequent use of 'statement of expectation or attitude'.This research has confirmed partial results in the previous studies and extended cross-cultural refusal research. The findings also help journalists and political analysts better understand cross-cultural political refusals.