Pragmatic Transfer In Refusals By Chinese Non-English Major Students

Pragmatic transfer often occurs when second language learners attempt to communicate in the target language. Refusals are considered to be a face-threatening act among the speech acts. If lack of knowledge of English social and cultural rules, one is likely to lead pragmatic failure. The present study endeavors to make a detailed analysis of pragmatic transfer in refusals made by Chinese non-English majors and to make contribution to the teaching of English. The research utilized the Discourse Completion Test to collect data. The subjects were divided into three groups—30Chinese native speakers,30Chinese non-English majors and30native English speakers. Among them, NC came from different social backgrounds; CEs are selected from Guangxi Normal University and NE was chosen from University of Surrey in England.This study adopts Discourse Completion Test (DCT) which borrowed from Beebe et al. The test consists of12DCT situations which can be divided into four types:request, invitation, offer and suggestion. Questionnaire designed in duplicate, a Chinese version for native Chinese (NC), an English version for Chinese non-English major university students (CEs) and native English (NE). This research has put all of the semantic formulas into uniform code to analyze the frequency of each semantic formula. Moreover, this research also adopted the judging patterns of Beebe at al. Data elicited from the Chinese subjects and British subjects show that pragmatic transfer in the refusals of Chinese non-English majors is evident in the choice of semantic formulas and frequency of semantic formulas. The result indicates that pragmatic transfer is really exists in refusals made by Chinese non-English majors.Furthermore, this paper also discusses some factors that may cause pragmatic transfer and put forward some suggestions to future English teaching. This research is mainly focusing on the pragmatic transfer of using target language to represent refusal speech act among those non-English major undergraduate students who are learning English in China. With the knowledge of pragmatic strategy, this can help non-English majors to decrease cultural pragmatic failure. This research can be beneficial to English learning, which will provide practical resources in the development of aspect of second language acquisition.