A Cross-Cultural Study Of Chinese And English Native Speakers' Refusal Strategies

During the process of communication, people with different cultural backgrounds would adopt different language forms to express their beliefs and attitudes. Language is very much influenced by culture and cultural value lies in the core of culture. Thus a successful communicator should not only possess the basic language knowledge but also have a profound understanding about culture and cultural value.As a face-threatening speech act, refusals will bring negative effects on the interlocutors, so people will employ appropriate refusal strategies to maintain both interlocutors'faces. Based on Brown and Levinson's politeness strategies, this paper aims at investigating refusal strategies adopted by both Chinese and native English speakers, especially the effects of social status or authority on the choices of refusal strategies employed by both groups. This survey was carried out in a quantitative and a qualitative study. The quantitative study employed a written DCT based on the findings of Beebe etc. and the qualitative study was completed by collecting refusal episodes from both English and Chinese movies. Based on Beebe's DCT, the qualitative study explored some nonverbal refusal strategies appearing in the 8 newly-released movies.The results indicate that similarities and differences co-exist in the choices of refusal strategies between Chinese and English native speakers. Generally speaking, both group members prefer indirect strategies to direct strategies such as reason, statement of regret, alternative and dissuasion and so on. What's more, a great number of adjuncts were employed by both groups to soften the embarrassing atmosphere caused by refusing others. However, some obvious differences in the frequency and contents of direct and indirect refusal strategies and different effects of power or status on both groups were also found in the study. Firstly, Chinese employed more indirect strategies than English native speakers. Secondly, English native speakers'refusals appeared relatively definite and clearer while Chinese refusals were vague and indefinite. Thirdly, the distribution of direct refusal strategies in both groups indicates that English native speakers tended to be less sensitive to social status or authority while Chinese apparently cared more about it.In this paper, some cultural values were employed to explain the different choices of refusal strategies between both groups, and then the implications about raising the English learners'cultural awareness in China were proposed. In conclusion, some merits and demerits were pointed out. On one hand, it provides some new sights for the study of refusal strategies. On the other hand, owing to the limitations of the author's time and energy and the deficiency of the instrument, there is still some room for improvement in the field.