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A Cross-Cultural Study on the Refusal Speech Act between English and Chinese

Author: ChangWan
Tutor: ZhangRui
School: Changchun University of
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: politeness principle face theory refusal speech act pragmatic transfer cross-cultural communication
CLC: H0-05
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2010
Downloads: 505
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Abstract

Refusal speech act is an important aspect of pragmatics used in practice. The thesis investigates both Chinese and English refusal speech act from the perspective of cross-cultural communication. People with different cultural background have its own characteristics in refusal speech act. American prefers individualism. They tend to directly refuse and also try their best not to hurt other people’s face. So they use some strategies to lower face threatening. While Chinese have a profound respect for collectivism and attach importance to personal relationship, so they prefer to use more strategies to decrease the threatening. In cross-cultural communication people would be affected by native language. They transfer their native language into the target language then cause communication failure. Therefore, some strategies should be used to avoid negative transfer in cross-cultural communication.In our daily life, it is common to refuse other people’s request, invitation and suggestion. It is considered to be a face breaking activity. In language expression, it is a face-threatening act. To weaken and desalt the threatening, politeness principle is the most common strategy. However, different kinds of strategies are applied in when handing different cultural background. In refusal speech act, Chinese people give priority to indirect refusal in esteem and the proportion of indirect strategies is relatively higher. As for the Americans, they prefer direct refusal so the proportion of direct strategies is higher. In refusal speech act, we also consider the status of a person. Different status leads to different strategies. There is tiny difference in refusing a high status person between Chinese and American. The proportion of using direct strategy is less than indirect strategy when refusing a higher status person.Language data used to support this thesis are collected by means of a questionnaire. The questionnaire based on Blum-Kulka’s Discourse Completion Test (DCT). SPSS’frequencies and descriptives are used to analyze the data which is collected by DCT. The results are more credible and SPSS ensures the reliability and validity of the questionnaire. Refusal responses from the questionnaire are divided and classified according to various refusal strategies and are compared and analyzed within the three groups. The results show there are similarities as well as differences between Chinese and English refusal strategies.According to the features of different culture, the thesis analyzes the refusal strategies. This results can be summarized in the following three points:(1) Chinese politeness in refusal means recognizing the status discrepancy and conveying it in linguistic formula, while English politeness in refusal stresses equality; (2) Chinese politeness uses more indirect and implicit face-negotiation strategies, while English politeness attaches more importance to direct face-negotiation strategies; (3) Chinese politeness expresses a greater degree of positive face maintenance, while English politeness values autonomy and negative face maintenance. The results also show learners tend to be influenced by the refusal styles of their native language when conversing in the target language.The thesis analyzes the feature of refusal speech act in different cultural background and the study shows that it is the cultural background that determines the choice of refusal strategy. English learner should not only know how to employ and understand refusal strategies in English but also be aware of the underlying cultural background in the communication to decrease misunderstanding; in pragmatic transfer, positive transfer could promote the learners’comprehension and mastery of the target language. As for negative transfer, it causes misunderstanding. We should pay attention to cultural differences and apply refusal strategy properly to eliminate the face threatening act. These are the aims of cross-cultural study and it also afford the methods of avoiding pragmatic failure for the learners. The comparative study on refusal speech act in different scenarios contributes to a better understanding of appropriate refusals in Chinese and English and of different cultural patterns. It also helps the learners select proper refusal strategies. The thesis makes sense both in practice and direction.

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