A Research On Refusal Speech Acts Used By English And Japanese Majors In Chinese Context Form The Perspective Of Reverse Conceptual Transfer

Reverse conceptual transfer is an important aspect of the study of transfer.It involves multiple language studies.It is the concerned topic of second language acquisition,language abrasion,psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics.At the conceptual level,the reverse transfer begins with the research of language through the concept then back to language.And it thinks that the phenomenon of a cross-language effect in language use is due to the influence of the conceptual category acquired through another language.Conceptual transfer put forward stands for the essence of transfer has been in cognitive level instead of language knowledge level so that researchers begin to think from the development of concepts(Nan,2015).They think the reason of cross-linguistic influence.The thesis mainly studies whether there are some differences when 60 English and Japanese majors’ refusals in Chinese context and produce reverse conceptual transfer in the four situations.The research questions are as follows: First,what are the general features of the refusal strategies adopted by English majors and Japanese majors in Chinese context?Are there any significant differences?Second,what are the characteristics of refusal strategies adopted by English majors and Japanese majors regarding request,invitation,offer and suggestion?Third,what are the factors that have or have not caused the reverse transfer of refusal speech act in Chinese context adopted by English majors and Japanese majors ?The questionnaire adopts discourse complete test,with four different situations:request,invitation,offer,suggestion.There are total ten questions has been designed according to each situation,and the collected data is analyzed by SPSS20.The fifth part deals with the results and has a general discussion on it based on the result of the T-test.Based on the above analysis,the thesis draws the following conclusion:(1)As for the general features of the refusal strategies adopted by English majors and Japanese majors in Chinese are very similar according to the tendency of the figure.while there exists several significant differences.(2)As for the characteristics of refusal strategies adopted by English majors andJapanese majors in the four different situations: request,invitation,offer,suggestion,and the factors which may or may not cause the reverse transfer of refusal speech act to occur in Chinese context.Based on the data analysis in chapter 5,the two groups students have been proofed that they have been affected by their majored languages,that is to say,there is the reverse transfer occurred.And this can be presented by the using of performative strategies(t(58)=2.236,p<0.05)for instance,because of the previous researches’ findings:Japanese refusal speech acts tend to adopt the indirect ways while English refusal speech acts are more direct and clear-cut.So the exist of reverse transfer can be supported by the significant difference which appears between the two groups of students.(3)As for the similar part of the result,it can be concluded that although the majored languages are different,which belongs to east and west culture,the whole principles during the common communication are the same.People are based on the face theory and politeness principles consciously and subconsciously,in order to make the conversation go on smoothly and avoid the embarrassment and hurting the others face.Though different languages and cultures are changed a lot,the fact that there are something in common can not be denied.However,there are inevitably some limitations of the study.For example,the degree of learning foreign language and gender differences of subjects may have some influence on research results.Therefore,there should be more systematic research in the field of reverse concept transfer.