A Study Of Refusal Strategies Among Speakers Of Chinese, American English, And Chinese EFL Learners

Speech acts are culture specific. There are many systematic variations in different sociocultural situations and communities. It is presumed that lack of enough social cultural communicative competence in performing the speech acts is the major cause of the communication failure. The refusals from different cultural backgrounds are not only influenced by different situational factors like social status, distance, gender and age, in the process of choosing the appropriate refusal strategies, but also by the cultural factors in which the efficiency and politeness are achieved through different ways.From a pedagogical point of view, refusals are worth investigating because the second language learners not only need to recognize the linguistic forms necessary to produce the speech act, but also need to be aware of social culture values that characterize the target community (Kasper & Schmidt 1996); that is, to be sensitive to the target culture by communicating appropriately in any given situation. Since refusal is one of the complex speech acts that represents an inherent threat to the interlocutor's face. It is generally considered a speech act performing speaker's intention denying engaging in an action proposed (Chen, Ye, and Zhang 1995: 121). It requires a lot of techniques to convey the refusing intention as well as minimize negative effects of the FTA. Therefore, refusal strategies are highly necessary for successful communication between different cultures. In recent years, some researchers have looked into the speech act of refusal. Some have investigated the theoretical aspects of the understanding and operation of refusal, from the Speech Act theory, Politeness Theory, and the Adaptation Theory.However, little work has been done on the EFL learners' competence of refusing in English. Are there unique features in their use of politeness strategies that are different from L1 and L2 systems? Is there any transfer of L1sociocultural knowledge in speaking L2?The objective of the present thesis is to investigate the similarities and differences between L1 and L2 refusal strategies, employed by Chinese, Americans and Chinese learners of English as a foreign language when performing the speech act of refusal, in three levels of social status (equal and unequal [higher and lower]) and four levels of social distance (kin, small, mid, and distant), with a little more emphasis on Chinese EFL learners. Ninety university students are included in the study. They are divided in three groups (30 subjects in each). CC group refers to the group of native speakers of Chinese responding in Chinese, AE group refers to the group of American native speakers of English responding in English, and CE group refers to the group of Chinese EFL learners responding in English.The instrument used in collecting the data for this study is a questionnaire consisted of two parts, a multiple choice test and a Discourse Completion Test adapted from that of Beebe et al. (1990). The data of Chinese subjects were collected in Qufu Normal University, China; the American native speaker data were collected by e-mailing the questionnaire to the subjects in the University of Pennsylvania., USA. All the data were coded following the coding scheme proposed by Blum-Kulka et al (1989) and Beebe et al (1990). The analysis of the data will take into account the frequency of and preference for refusal strategies or semantic formulae and the role of social variables played in the directness level of refusal, and put a little emphasis on the EFL learners' production of refusal strategies and the influencing factors lying behind.The strategies of refusal are classified into three kinds: direct refusal, indirect refusal, and adjunct. Direct refusals are direct denials of compliance without reservation. Indirect refusals are the strategies that the illocutionary force of refusal is uttered by means of the performance of other speech acts. Adjuncts are the preliminary remarks that could not appear alone and function as refusals. With the comparisons to...