| Refusal, as an important speech act in our daily life, is studied from differentperspectives by many scholars. However, up to date, few studies pay attention to thecontrastive study of refusals employed by parents to kids. This paper, based onPragmatic Markedness Relevance Model (PMRM for short), analyzes the differentrefusals that employed by Chinese and American parents. It also analyzes the degreeof these differences. This study is also believed to bear theoretical and practicalsignificance for giving us a better understanding of Cooperate Principle, PolitenessPrinciple, Indirect Speech Act Theory, and Face theory. Meanwhile, this study ishelpful for cross-cultural communication and providing some inspirations on how toeducate children. Therefore, we introduce the integrated framework PMRM, then,apply it to the collected data.Methodologically, both qualitative and quantitative methods are used in this study.Applying the integrated framework PMRM to analyze the different refusals and thereasons for these differences are qualitative. It is quantitative because the study isdata-based analysis.Based on the previous studies, this study introduces the definitions of refusal andlists different kinds of definitions, the classifications of refusal strategies and thescope of refusal. For the current study, we combine some definitions as the following:Refusals are face-threatening speech acts for denying the interlocutors’ requests.And then focus our attention on the previous studies from different angles. In thisstudy, we will follow the mostly previous study and classify the refusal strategies intodirect refusals, indirect refusals and adjuncts to refusals. And we will combine indirectstrategies of Beebe et al.(1990) with the indirect strategies of Felix-Brasdefer (2008)to analyze the collection data.Many scholars like Beebe et al.(1990), Nelson et al.(1996,2002), Liao andBressnahan (1996), Chen (1996), Wannaruk (2004,2005,2008) have studied on therefusals from different perspectives, who divide the speech acts of refusals into fourgroups: requests, invitations, offers and suggestions fit for the refusals. In our study, we will only study the refusals of requests. And we only care about the requests whichare employed by kids to favor for themselves. During the process of analyzing thecollection data, we classify the request of kids into two kinds: reasonable request andunreasonable request.This thesis contains five chapters. The first part gives a macro introduction to thestudy; the second part lays the foundation for the study, discusses the definition ofrefusal, reviews relevant literature based on our categorization of the previous studieson the related theme. On that basis, the contributions and shortcomings will bediscussed; Chapter3and Chapter4are the major parts of the thesis. Chapter3presents the theoretical framework PMRM, which is an integrated Theory. Chapter4offers detailed analysis of a variety of refusals to prove the practicability andeffectiveness of the PMRM, then, sums up the different refusal strategies employedby Chinese parents and American parents. At the end of this part, it gives the reasonsfor those differences. The last part sums up the study.This thesis aims to introduce a more efficient integrated model to analyze thedifferent refusal strategies, which have been employed by Chinese and Americanparents to kids, and analyze the reasons for these differences. PMRM is based onRelevance Theory and Pragmatic Markedness Theory, and which is influenced by thepragmatic markedness value (PMV), the processing efforts (PE), Contextual Effects(CE). And PMV mainly depends on the appropriateness. This study applies diagramof PMRM to analyze the collection data, which derives from Chinese sitcom Homewith Kids and American sitcom Growing Pains. We find that this model can clearlyand succinctly demonstrate the processing of refusal, the different refusal strategies,and the reasons for these differences. |
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