A Comparative Study On Speech Acts Of Refusal Used By Spokespersons In Chinese And American Regular Press Conferences

Since 1990 s, speech acts of refusal have attracted a great deal of attention. Scholars have paid attention to refusals in the informal interpersonal communication through a discourse completion test(DCT) to collect data. There are few studies based on formal institutional discourses. Regular press conferences, a typical institutional discourse, bear an important responsibility to defend national interests, guide international public opinions and build the good image of a country. Therefore, the present study goes beyond informal scenarios and seeks to investigate refusals in institutional discourses, especially regular press conferences.Transcripts of 80 Chinese and 80 American regular press conferences on North Korean and Iranian nuclear issues from January 2014 to December 2014 are the data of this study, from which 162 and 198 refusals have been identified, respectively. Based on Beebe et al.’s refusal strategies(1990) and Wang Aihua’s refusal modifications(2001), with the help of quantitative and qualitative methods, the author has compared the Chinese and American spokespersons’ speech acts of refusal. Besides, descriptive and inferential statistics are adopted to analyze the data. The results are as follows:American spokespersons have a relatively broader range in the refusal strategy selection(16 > 13). With respect to direct strategies, Chinese and American spokespersons use them less frequently. However, compared with Chinese spokespersons, American spokespersons overuse the direct strategies(U.S.: 13.45%; China: 0.54%) and the difference is statistically significant. In terms of indirect strategies, Chinese and American spokespersons frequently use “avoidance”, and no significant difference is revealed. The differences are that American spokespersons are inclined to adopt explicit indirect strategies, such as “statement of reason”, “statement of alternative” and “promise of future acceptance”, whereas Chinese spokespersons prefer to use implicit indirect strategies, such as “statement of wish”, “statement of principle” and “acceptance that functions as a refusal”.American spokespersons use more refusal modifications than Chinese spokespersons(619 > 488). In terms of external modifications, American spokespersons show a higher preference to Chinese spokespersons(15.51% > 3.69%) and the difference is statistically significant. With respect to internal modifications, “point of view operation” is used most frequently while “upgrader” is used least frequently by Chinese and American spokespersons. The differences are that American spokespersons tend to use “syntactic downgrader”, while Chinese spokespersons prefer to use “lexical downgrader”, where there are significant differences.In the present study, it is argued that the possible reasons leading to the results lie in the politeness, different cultural patterns and features of press conferences. This study broadens the research field of speech acts of refusal and provides some suggestions for future studies to some extent. Meanwhile, the author hopes that this study can provide some suggestions for language learners in interpreting speech acts of refusal in regular press conferences.