A Study Of Chinese College English Majors’ Production Of Disagreement Strategies In Discussion

Disagreement is an expressive speech act in daily communication,which has been studied by researchers from such theoretical perspectives as politeness principle,sociolinguistics and conversational analysis and cross-cultural communication.The participants involved were native speakers of different languages or L2 learners with different L1 backgrounds.Nonetheless,the existing research into disagreement about Chinese English learners is quite insufficient.With the guidance of the rapport management theory,this study has made a survey of disagreement strategies in oral interaction produced by 44 Chinese first-year English majors from a university in Zhejiang province by collecting role-play,questionnaire and semi-structured interview data.The present study answers three questions:(1)What types of strategies do Chinese college English majors adopt in performing disagreement?(2)How do they manage rapport in the choices of strategies?(3)What are the factors influencing their employment of disagreement strategies?The quantitative and qualitative analysis of data show that:(1)The proportion of softened disagreement type,not softened or strengthened disagreement type and aggravated disagreement type is 73.09%,21.34%and 5.57%respectively.Hedges and partial agreement strategies are most frequently used in softened disagreement type.Contradictory statement and rhetorical questions strategies have the.highest frequency in not softened or strengthened disagreement type and aggravated disagreement type respectively.(2)They tend to use indirect expressions to enhance and maintain the rapport;they seldom use aggravated disagreements to challenge or impair the harmony of the relationship.(3)Discussion topics,social distance between interactants and L1 language transfer influence the realization of disagreements.The present study is conducive to know the characteristics of pragmatic competence and the factors.It also indicates the necessity of developing pragmatic teaching materials based on authentic data,instruction of L2 interaction in English teaching and pragmatic instruction.