| Since the beginning of 1980s, interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has arisen as an independent discipline. One branch of ILP is speech act studies which have recently been widely conducted to explore the interlanguage pragmatic competence (IPC) of foreign/second language learners. The speech act of refusal is a face-threatening act (FTA). Whether it is used appropriately or not has a direct bearing on the successful communication. Therefore, a good mastery of refusal is a good reflection of learners'pragmatic competence. However, so far, the studies on refusals, especially the refusal in Chinese English learners are not as substantial as other speech acts in ILP studies.Thus, the author carried out the present study to investigate the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of Chinese non-English majors'interlanguage refusals to better understand Chinese English learners'IPC. The instruments applied are an open-ended Discourse Complete Test (DCT), a corresponding multiple-choice questionnaire (MCQ) and a sociopragmatic assessment questionnaire (SAQ). The participants are two sophomore classes in Harbin Institute of Technology. For the pragmalinguistic aspect, the data collected in DCT were coded for semantic formulas and sentential structure analysis. From the sociopragmatic perspective, the results in SAQ are compared with the designation criterion; the strategies in refusals were assigned politeness values for correlation analysis with social factors in SPSS 13.0. Finally, the performance in DCT, MCQ and SAQ was compared to explore whether the interlanguage pragmatic competence corresponds to pragmatic awareness.The findings are as follows: first, in the semantic formulas, 30.15% of the total refusals are direct, a big contrast with native-speakers who usually employ indirect strategies. 69.85% of the refusals are indirect strategies, indicating that most participants pay attention to the politeness and try to avoid threatening face. As for the supportive moves and modifications, generally, the total strategies applied cover a wide range. However, in the case of individual participant, the strategies used are relatively quite limited. In addition, the sentential structures present some inclination, for example, structure rg+gr (statement of regret +grounder) enjoys the most popularity, and if there are any, the non-performative refusals usually appear second, regrets first and grounders second in the sequential position. Second, SAQ results demonstrate that participants have good recognition of social power and social distance, but weak perception of rank of imposition. As for the correlations between the politeness values and each social factor, the results do not work out as expected, with only a few significant correlation coefficients, implying that participants can not perform accordingly either in free responses or multiple choices despite their understanding of the social factors. Last but not least, by comparing the semantic formulas in DCT and MCQ and also the politeness values with SAQ results, we find tremendous contrast, implying that participants pragmatic performance does not correspond with their awareness well.To summarize, Chinese non-English learners have acquired certain pragmatic competence, i.e. they can employ a certain amount of strategies in hand appropriately, perceive certain social factors and to some extent behave appropriately to certain corresponding circumstances. However, some improvements are badly needed. Generally, the strategies lack variety, the politeness values of the refusals reveals lack of adequate perception of social factors in specific situations, and the performance lags behind the pragmatic awareness. Thus, Chinese English learners still have to work on the pragmatic acquisition, and the teaching in China needs to pay more attention to the students'pragmatic competence development. Besides, the study provides certain implication for the future IPC research. |
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