A Contrastive Study On Refusal Speech Acts In Chinese And American Dating Programs From An Intercultural Perspective

As one of the speech acts, refusal speech act is widely used in ourdaily life. Due to different culture rules, members from different cultureshave different understandings of the same refusal speech act. In addition,how to say ‘NO’ appropriately has become very important incross-culture communication. In recent years, many scholars haveconducted many refusal speech acts studies from the perspective oflinguistics. However, in cross culture field, few scholars have conductedrelated studies. This thesis will analyze the refusal speech act from thecross-cultural perspective. By comparing Chinese and American datingprograms, namely You Are the One and Take Me Out, this thesis aims atdiscovering the differences in refusal speech acts between these twodating programs and analyzing them in cross-cultural perspective.Moreover, this paper will discuss the two programs elaborately based onFTA(face threatening act), face negotiation theory, and politeness theory.The study shows that both Chinese and American people avoidthreatening other’s face directly when they apply the refusal speech actsstrategy. When they adopt the refusal speech act, American people aremore offensive and straightforward, while Chinese people are moreharmonious and implicit. However, some assertive and straightforwardphenomena also appear in the Chinese dating program.Theoretically, the significance of this research lies in that it canprovide some useful information for future refusal speech act studies.Practically, the study can help people enhance interculturalcommunicative competence in intercultural communication.