A Comparative Study On English Refusal Speech Acts Between Different Acquisition Conditions

As an essential part of interpersonal interaction, politeness theories have always been a major concern for pragmatics. In the past century, western pragmatics experts and scholars had produced enormous researches. These researches had laid a solid foundation for the followed studies on politeness phenomena. The most well known achievements from these studies are the face theory formulated by Brown and Levinson and the politeness principles proposed by Leech. Following these researches some Chinese scholars had carried out researches on politeness phenomena as well. Chinese linguist Gu Yueguo deserves our special attention among those scholars. He had proposed the"four norms"to explain unique characteristics of Chinese politeness.Politeness appears to be a prevalent concept in human interactions. As face threatening acts, refusals speech acts are frequently employed in our daily life. Due to their face-threatening nature, interlocutors have to take politeness into consideration when using them and use politeness strategies to mitigate its threat to the refusee's face.This thesis will mainly discuss politeness phenomena reflected in English refusal strategies used by people who acquired English in different acquisition considitions. The three acquisition considitions are: English as a foreign language acquisition condition (the CE group), English as a second language acquisition condition (the SE group) and English as native language acquisition condition (the NE group). This thesis will follow the trend of politeness study. One of its creative points is to study speech acts in connection with refusal strategies and to study politeness through contrastive study of refusal speech acts in the three English acquisition conditions. Similarities and dissimilarities in English refusal speech acts used by subjects in these three acquisition considitions will be analyzed and discussed. Explanations in value of politeness theories and cultural value will be elicited. In order to achieve veracious results, data were collected by using DCTs(Discourse Completion Task) which contain 11 situations for subjects to give their refusal responses. I picked up 523 subjects from the three different acquisition groups were required to fill in their refusal responses for situations in DCTs. Then those refusal speech acts and refusal strategies they used were derived and analyzed.In this study, the similarities and differences between the three groups are investigated from three levels: (1) direct and indirect refusal patterns used by the three groups; (2) the frequency of semantic formulas used in each situation were coded to investigate the strategies employed by the three groups; (3) influences of social status on the adoption of semantic formulas. Data proved that despite similarities, there were significant differences in strategies between the three groups. Major findings of this study are: There are both similarities and differences in the performance of refusal speech acts by subjects in CE, SE and NE group. Generally speaking, a major similarity in selection of refusal strategies in CE and NE group is: the frequency of indirect refusal speech acts used in CE group's answers is higher than direct ones. This indicates that both Chinese culture and American culture have recognized: indirect refusal speech acts are more polite than direct ones .In addition, the four commonly used indirect strategies which are reason, dissuasion, alternative and regret, are the same in all three groups. One of the differences in using of refusal strategies among the three different acquisition groups is: CE group subjects used more refusal strategies than the subjects in other two groups. In useing strategies, CE group subjects are more likely to use indirect refusla strategies than subjects in the other two groups. It shows that CE group subjects are more inclined to indirect strategies and more sensitive to the speaker's social status at the same time.There are different reasons responsible for the choice of strategies by CE, SE and NE group subjects when performing refusal speech acts. CE group subjects cared about their social public images more than English native speakers and SE group subjects. They acquired English in a more cultural related way that made them care about problem sloving and self-image more than social public images. The differences in using of refusal speech acts between CE group and SE group subjects show that: English as a second language acquisition condition is better than English as a foreign language acquisition condition. This advantage of English as a second language acquisition condition has influenced SE group subjects'English proficiencies. These advantages can be seen in their organization of refusal strategies and proper politeness.Owning to restricted time, there are limitations of this study. But the differences of refusal speech acts among different acquisition conditions listed in this thesis and the reasons it gives are hoped to be useful in helping English teachers and learners use and understand refusal speech acts correctly in communication. This thesis also has practical value in our English teaching and learning.