REFUSAL STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH SPEECH: A PRAGMATIC STUDY (original) (raw)
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Males and Females Refusals: A Case Study of Persian University Students
In response to requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions, acceptance or agreement are usually preferred and refusing or rejecting is not. Refusals and rejections can mean disapproval of the interlocutor's idea and therefore, a threat to the interlocutor's face. While acceptance or agreement tend to be used in direct language without much delay, mitigation, or explanation, refusals tend to be indirect, include mitigation, and/or delay within the turn or across turns. The delay probably shows that the refuser has a good reason for refusing and may imply that the refuser would accept or agree instead if it were possible or practical. In this paper, the language patterns used to make refusals by both males and females with different status and in various situations are compared and whether the responses are direct or indirect is considered. The results show that there is no evidence of variation generally but in some situations a little variation was observed. Key Words: Refusal, Direct Refusal, Indirect Refusal, Status Differentials.
The Effect of Status on Refusal Strategies Used by American
Nowadays, the notion of pragmatics is gaining more and more prominence among language learners. Communicating merely for the sake of communication is necessary but not sufficient. In order to truly communicate, issues such as the appropriateness of speech acts and face saving become crucial. Therefore, it stands to reason to achieve a high level of pragmatic competence in speech acts. Bearing this in mind, this study opted to find out the different refusal strategies Iranian EFL students and Native American speakers employ when faced with requests from lower, equal, and higher social status interlocutors. To this end, a questionnaire was given to twenty Iranian (i.e. ten males and ten females) advanced EFL university students and twenty Native Americans via email. The results revealed that unlike American Native speakers, Iranian EFL learners have a tendency to use direct strategies of refusals more often which may be attributed to both their lack of pragmatic knowledge and interlingual transfer from their native language.
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE REFUSAL SPEECH ACT OF TURKISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH
This study investigates and compares politeness strategies of Turkish learners of English (TLE) and American English speakers (AE) when they produce the speech act of refusal in English. A total of 24 participants took part in this study and each of them completed a background survey, an open role play and a semi-structured interview. The role-play asked all of the participants to refuse a party invitation offered by a classmate/colleague and was audio- recorded. The refusal interactions were coded according to the classification proposed by Beebe et al. (1990), and the sequence of the refusal interactions (i.e., head act, pre- and post-refusals) was also examined. The results showed that providing excuse/reason/explanation was the most preferred strategy by both groups overall, but closer examination of the strategy revealed that the TLE group was more specific in their explanations compared to the AE group. In addition, when the conductor of the role play insisted on the invitation, the AE group continued to refuse without giving specific reasons, whereas the TLE group chose to provide elaborate reasons upon insistence. During the interview session after the role play, the TLE group commented on cultural factors that influenced their choice of refusal strategies. Based on the findings, this study also proposed implications of the teaching of pragmatics in the English as a second language (ESL) context.
Refusals: How to develop appropriate refusal strategies
Refusal can be a difficult speech act to perform. As a disprefered response, it is complicated in form and it usually involves various strategies to avoid offending one’s interlocutor. For second language learners with linguistic limitations, performing refusals successfully may require a higher level of pragmatic competence than other target language speech acts. Thus there is a need for pragmatic instruction in order to help learners interpret and realise this speech act successfully. Based on previous research on the speech act of refusal and studies in instructional pragmatics, this chapter proposes a teaching approach that includes both awareness raising and production activities. The instructional strategies involve learners in translation, data collection, data analysis, reflection, and role-play activities.
This study investigates how Iranian speakers of Persian realize the speech act of refusals to the initiating acts of offers, suggestions, invitations and requests. 208 acts of refusals were naturally collected and classified according to the refusal classification scheme proposed by . The results showed that Iranian Persian speakers employ indirect strategies and a combination of direct and indirect strategies more than direct ones in refusals, in communication with the interactants with whom they have ongoing relationship. 'Reason' and 'gratitude' were the most frequent strategies in the data. Returning the act was found to be a new strategy. Finally, the socio-cultural implications of the variety in the production of refusals are discussed.
Refusals of invitations and offers in Persian: Genuine or ostensible?
This study investigated instances of Persian genuine and ostensible (ritual) refusals produced in response to genuine offers and invitations. The data was collected through ethnographic observations and was analyzed in light of a modified version of defining properties and features of ostensible speech acts proposed by . Furthermore, cultural schemas and sociocultural norms underlying ostensible refusals in Persian were investigated through focus group interviews (FGI). The results revealed that although the features of ostensible speech acts proposed by are present in ostensible refusals in Persian, they are not always sufficient to distinguish Persian ritual and genuine refusals. The results of the focus group interviews also showed that ritual refusals in Persian are complex speech acts strongly linked to Persian cultural schemas of tǎ'ǎrof (ritual politeness) and ru-dar-bǎyesti (feeling of distance out of respect). The findings indicated that the main factors motivating the production of ritual refusals in Persian are observing rules of politeness and enhancing the face of the speaker as well as that of the interlocutor. Therefore, the pretence in sincerity of the ritual refusals arise from the speakers' concern for maintaining rapport.
REFUSAL STRATEGIES USED BY MALE AND FEMALE SELLERS AT PASAR RAYA PADANG
This article is aimed at finding different strategies used by male and female sellers while refusing the buyers' offer. This study was done by using descriptive research design in which the data related to the object of the study were collected to answer the research question. The data of this study are refusals in the bargaining process between sellers and buyers that took place in Pasar Raya Padang. The finding of the research shows that male sellers used non performative statement strategy most frequently which implicitly indicated that they tended to refuse the buyers' offer in a direct way. Female sellers, on the other hand, used excuse, reason, and explanation strategy most frequently which indicated that they preferred to refuse their buyers' offer in an indirect way.