A Pragmatic Study Of Refusing Speech Act By Chinese English Learners

This thesis, based on a questionnaire on the performance of refusing speech actamong80Chinese senior students majored in English and another77Chinese seniornon-English majors from a university in China, attempts to investigate the semanticcomponents and strategies of refusals as well as the factors that influence the choiceof refusing strategy, to make a comparison between the two groups regardingsemantic components of refusals, refusing strategy choice and the extent to whichstrategy choice is subject to certain factors, and to know the pragmatic competence ofthe English majors under study in the hope of making certain practical suggestions forfuture foreign language teaching.Based on a qualitative and quantitative study of the data collected, it is found thatboth English majors and non-English majors show a preference for indirect refusingstrategy to direct one, with the former being more direct than the latter. Factorsinfluencing speakers’ choice of refusing strategy include social distance, relativepower, and whether a situation involves obligation/right, all of which are deeplyrooted in the culture of speakers’ native language. The degree to which these fourfactors exert their influence is not the same for two groups, with English majors beingless responsive to these factors. Informants majored in English are also observed to becapable of performing communicative acts in English, yet they are found to use anarrower range of linguistic means than what they are actually capable of and to bearcertain Chinese-specific traits in their utterance due to influence from their nativelanguage.