A Contrastive Study Of Chinese And American Refusal Strategies In Love Apartment And Friends

This thesis made a supplement to the refusal strategies,and redefines it as the verbal acts or non-verbal acts that the listener launches when he or she refuses the speaker's questions,requests,invitations,gifts,or suggestions.According to the previous semantic classification of refusal speech acts,by transcribing the conversations in the Love Apartment and Friends into written forms,this research tries to compare and analyze refusal strategies in the two operas from different perspectives based on the Politeness Principle and the Linguistic Adaptation Theory in both quantitative and qualitative 'ways.As representative sitcoms in China and the US,Love Apartment and Friends all describe the friendship,family affection and love story of young men and women in the same apartment,which are the reflections of the real life in modern China and America respectively.Also,there are enough refusals in Love Apartment and Friends,which are the basis of the comparative study of Chinese and American refusal strategies.The contents of this research are as follows:1.to classify refusal strategies with different ways;2.to explore what refusal strategies Chinese and American use in daily communication;3.to analyze the principles and preferences of Chinese and American refusal strategies in the two operas;4.to describe the characteristics of refusal strategies in vocabulary and syntax;5.to summarize reasons leading to these differences.From the perspective of truth,the refusal strategies can be divided into sincere refusal and mock refusal.While objectively speaking,the refusal strategies can be divided into verbal and non-verbal strategies according to the way of rejection.The research finds that there are resemblances and differences in the frequency and expressions of refusal strategies between Chinese and Americans as follows.1.Both Chinese and Americans use mock refusals,but the mock refusals in the USA are not so lengthy and verbose like that in China,and they often don't have so many turn-takings as Chinese do.2.Chinese tend to use nonverbal strategies and verbal strategies at the same time,and people often use nonverbal strategies mostly between leaders and their subordinates.While Americans use more nonverbal strategies,and they rarely use the two strategies simultaneously.3.Chinese pay more attention to the positive face and tend to be euphemistic in refusing,while the Americans focus more on the negative face,the refusal of Americans is more direct than that of Chinese.4.Chinese can use different addresses to achieve different pragmatic effects so as to reject others,while people in America use many inflexions and syntactic rules to reach their goals.Based on the above conclusions,the author hopes to provide suggestions for people to deal with interpersonal relations,especially providing ways for people to reject others without damaging the face of both sides.Also,the research helps people to understand the differences and similarities between Chinese and American refusal strategies so as to achieve the purpose of cross-cultural communication.The study redefines the refusal strategy and makes a relatively complete classification of refusal strategies,which enriches the theoretical study of refusal strategy and provides a theoretical basis for the teaching of English and Chinese as foreign languages.