A contrastive pragmatic study on American english and mandarin refusal strategies

Abstract

Six scenarios of requests are devised for university students in the United States and Taiwan to fill in what they would say when they would rather refuse. The findings are: both Taiwanese and Americans utter the politeness markers of apology in the similar frequency. Americans are less likely to refuse a friend, Chinese a family member. Americans and Chinese use different formulaic expressions in refusal and apply different strategies. Chinese people are more economic at making excuses; for this we propose a politeness hypothesis of dian-dao-wei-zhi ‘marginally touching the point’. Chinese try not to give the peer a lesson; Americans tend to offer different reasons in refusal and do not hesitate to give a lesson if they are right. The majority of both cultures provide vague reasons to refuse a high-status; however, significantly more Chinese offer specific reasons in refusing a high-status. Politeness is what people in both cultures are concerned about; however, the ways in which politeness is manifested reflects the modest nature of the Oriental countries and the non-self-denigrative nature of the Western countries.