A Pragmatic Study on the Speech Act of Refusal by Chinese EFL Learners

Abstract

This study, based on a questionnaire on the performance of refusing speech act among 80 Chinese senior English majors and 77 Chinese senior non-English majors from a university in China, attempts to investigate the semantic components and pragmatic strategies of refusal as well as the sociocultural factors that influence the choice of refusing strategy. After a qualitative and quantitative study of the collected data, it is found that both English majors and non-English majors show a preference for indirect refusing strategy to direct one, with the former being more direct than the latter. Factors influencing speakers' choice of refusing strategy include social distance, relative power, and whether a situation involves obligation/right, all of which are deeply rooted in the culture of speakers' native language. The degree to which these four factors exert their influence is not the same for the two groups, with English majors appearing less responsive than their non-English counterparts. Informants majoring in English are also observed to be capable of performing communicative acts in English, though using a narrower range of linguistic means than what they are actually capable of and to bear certain Chinese-specific traits in their utterances due to influence from their native language.