A Pragmatic Study Of Refusal Speech Acts In This Is Us From The Perspective Of Relevance-Adaptation Theory

As a form of verbal communication,refusal speech act usually refers to the uncooperative and unwilling state of the speaker in the face of the invitation,request,offer or suggestion of the interlocutor.Refusal speech act is a universal linguistic phenomenon.If this linguistic phenomenon is not well-handled,it will potentially affect people’s daily communication.In addition,it is necessary to adopt certain refusal strategies when implementing refusal speech acts.Therefore,it is necessary to study refusal speech acts and refusal strategies.Scholars at home and abroad mainly study refusal speech acts from the fields of pragmatics and second language acquisition.Previous research perspectives mainly focus on Face Theory,Politeness Principle,Speech Act Theory and so on,but these theories cannot explain the use of refusal speech acts well.Relevance-Adaptation Theory has a strong explanatory power in explaining the production and understanding process of refusal speech acts,so it’s possible to analyze how refusal speech acts are realized in the process of relevance-adaptation from both the speaker and the hearer.More importantly,there are relatively few studies on refusal speech acts from the perspective of Relevance-Adaptation Theory.Therefore,this study makes full use of the advantages of the two theories,and on the basis of previous research findings,selects 430 refusals from the first three seasons of the American TV series This Is Us,which is close to American real life,as a corpus,aiming to further investigate the types and frequencies of refusal strategies as well as the realization process of refusal speech acts.Based on the Relevance-Adaptation Theory,this study employs a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods,and mainly discusses the following two questions:First,what are the types and frequencies of refusal strategies used in This Is Us?Second,how are refusal speech acts in This Is Us realized under the guidance of Relevance-Adaptation Theory?This study draws the following conclusions:(1)Refusal strategy used by the speaker is a strategic choice in the process of relevance-adaptation.Refusal strategies in the corpus will be analyzed in terms of direct refusal strategy,indirect refusal strategy and adjuncts to refusals.The frequency of using indirect refusal strategy is the highest,accounting for60.3%,followed by direct refusal strategy,accounting for 22.3%.The frequency of using adjuncts to refusals is the lowest,accounting for 17.4%.(2)The process of producing and interpreting refusal speech acts is the process in which the speaker expresses ostensive information and the hearer infers information.At the same time,both parties can be transformed into each other in dynamic communication,and they can be both speakers and hearers.The speaker usually makes an appropriate choice of rejection based on his/her own presumption of relevance,so as to seek the optimal relevance in accordance with the context.Both parties make linguistic choices by adapting to the social,mental and physical world in the process of uttering refusal utterances.The formation process of refusal speech acts is a process of dynamic inter-adaptation between contextual correlates and linguistic structures.The pragmatic meaning reflected by the refusal speech act is still of reference significance to the interpersonal communication in today’s era.Therefore,studying refusal speech acts in This Is Us from the perspective of Relevance-Adaptation Theory has certain practical significance for guiding people to successfully engage in social communication.