A Comparative Study Of Refusal Strategies In Chinese And American Movies And TV Dramas

This study aims to compare the similarities and differences of Chinese and Americansin how to refuse by extracting two hundred items from Chinese and American movies andTV dramas. The thesis framework is based on Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz (1990)’sresearch on the study of refusal with slight modification being made to adjust to the needsof this study. The study takes into account two social variables: social distance and socialstatus as controlled variables. Furthermore, four initiating acts: request, suggestion,invitation and offer are also studied to find out the similarities and differences under thesefour acts.This thesis makes comparison mainly from three aspects:1) the comparison ofsimilarities and differences of direct refusals and indirect refusals in terms of frequency,order and semantic formulas;2) the comparison of refusal strategies in response to types ofinitiating acts;3) the comparison of similarities and differences of refusals in relation withsocial distance and status.There are totally200items with100items in both Chinese and American movies andTV dramas. The data are obtained by means of taking notes when watching movies and TVdramas through the Internet. Two things were to be noticed when notes were taken:interlocutors’ social status and social distance. That means if the roles of the interlocutorsare family members, close friends, acquaintances and strangers with their positions to besuperiors, inferiors and peers. The analysis method is SPSS (Statistical Product and ServiceSolutions) to make sure analysis results reliable. This study finds out that both Chinese and Americans prefer to refuse people in anindirect way. But Chinese refuse more frequently in an indirect way than Americans. Bothgroups prefer to use the strategy of excuse, reason or explanation to refuse peopleindirectly. But there is a significant difference in the indirect refusal strategy betweenChinese and Americans. Chinese use this strategy to refuse others more frequently. Interms of four initiating acts, for Chinese and Americans, refusing requests rank first,followed by refusing suggestions, invitations and offer. When refusing offers only, peoplein both nations tend to use a direct way to refuse. Social variables: social distance andsocial status, do affect the way two groups refuse others. Americans tend to refuse peoplewith higher status more frequently than Chinese people in a direct way.The similarities and differences about how Chinese and Americans refuse others areclosely related with cultural values. In different cultural background, politeness isconstructed on diverse framework. Thus, this study explores the cultural patterns behindpoliteness phenomena, which can shed light on foreign language learning and teaching.