A Comparative Study Of Disagreement Strategies Between Chinese And American College Students

This thesis investigates Chinese and American disagreementspeech act from the perspective of intercultural communication. Itincorporates face theories from pragmatics and sociolinguistics tomake a comparative analysis. In the empirical study, DiscourseCompletion Test is adopted as the instrument to identify thediscrepancies and the commonalities between Chinese and Americandisagreement speech act.160valid written questionnaires in all,80ineach language, are collected and analyzed according to thedisagreement strategies in different culture patterns. The threevariables—social distance, relative power and absolute ranking ofimposition—are the possible factors of shaping the strategies ofdisagreement between the two cultures.The results of analysis show that both commonalities anddifferences exist in the two cultures:(1) Collectivism-oriented Chinesecollege students are more sensitive to the social distance when theyexpress disagreement; on the contrary Americans college students areless sensitive to that.(2) Relative power has the great impact onChinese and American college students, but they have the differentcharacteristics.(3) Finally, in the intercultural communication encounter,the college students of the both sides use the similar way to expressdisagreement.This comparative study provides to a better understanding ofappropriate Chinese and American disagreement speech acts acrosscultures in the hope of enhancing Chinese EFL learners’ pragmaticabilities and intercultural communication competence.