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control the other’s behavior rather than to seek a fair resolution of a conflict. Dunn (1988) observed 50 second-born children between 33 and 47 months and found that the children are less likely to argue for conciliation at 47 than at 33 months. Dunn concluded that when children become more sophisticated in understanding other people, they apply their reasoning skills to satisfy their own interests instead of to resolve conflicts or maintain harmony in a relationship. However, the children’s refusals became more sophisticated in terms of indirectness and thus were less face-threatening with growing age.
2.4 Adult refusal
Adult refusal has been examined by asking subjects to fill out a questionnaire.
Most studies have adopted the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) in which different situations are presented to elicit a speech act performance.
Liao (1994) collected natural dialogues of Mandarin-speaking junior high school students, undergraduates, and teachers. In addition, subjects were also asked to fill out questionnaires. Analyzing the data from the oral and written sources, Liao categorized adult refusal into twenty-two strategies. 1 Certain expressions/strategies in conversation are conventionalized in specific contexts; and thus became “on-record”, a term coined by Brown and Levinson (1987). Liao’s observations were that, first; it is
1 For more detailed definition and explicit examples, please refer to Liao, C.C. (1994).
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more polite to use the address form than not, even if the speaker has already drawn the hearer’s attention. Second, people who used a performative verb jien4-yi4
‘suggest’ in an explicit performative utterance in an assertive form were considered to be more polite. Third, giving an alternative was better than giving only a vague reason.
Fourth, in ‘why not’ form, giving a specific reason was more polite than giving an alternative. Lastly, a combination of vague reason and alternative was better than an alternative or a reason alone. People use the linguistic form dui4-bu4-qi3 ‘I’m sorry’
to precede a refusal strategy to express politeness. To refuse a request of invitation, or offer of a help, or an offer, xie4-xie0 ‘thank you’ was frequently adopted. To conclude, the twenty-two strategies may be universal amongst adults’ speech uses; however, people choose the most appropriate expression to use in a refusal based on the nature of the context. As time goes by, some usages became conventionalized and consequently served specific pragmatic functions.
Chen, Ye, and Chang (1995) investigated the use of refusal strategies in mainland Chinese. Fifty males and fifty females whose mean age was 32.3 years old were asked to fill out a questionnaire with 16 different scenarios. The scenarios were classified into four initiation acts: requests, suggestions, invitations, and offers. Each scenario specified the speaker’s social status relative to the interlocutor and the social distance between the speaker and the interlocutor.
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The results showed that the order from high to low frequency of the overall distribution of adults’ refusal strategies in Chinese was “reason”, “alternative”, “direct refusal”, “regret”, “dissuade the interlocutor”, “avoidance”, “conditional acceptance”,
“principle”, and “folk wisdom”. “Reason” was the most frequently used strategy.
Furthermore, the reasons subjects used mostly referred to prior commitments or obligations beyond the speaker’s control, rather than stating the speaker’s deliberate preference for non-compliance. Chen et al. justified such a response by arguing that that people seek to refuse without running the risk of causing the other side to lose face. The second most frequently used strategy was to provide an alternative. The provision of an alternative provided a way to avoid a direct confrontation.
Furthermore, the provision of an alternative illustrates consideration in acknowledging the desires and needs of the interlocutor.
The relation between refusal strategies and the four types of initiation acts was also examined. The findings indicated that there was a correlation between refusal strategies and the initiating acts. “Reason” was used most frequently in responses to request, suggestion, and invitation, while “dissuade the interlocutor” was generated most frequently in responses to offers. The preference patterns in the refusal strategies reflected that the specific conversational context plays an important role in the choices of refusal strategy.
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The combination of refusal strategies is also discussed. The most preferred combination for refusal in Chinese was “Reason-Alternative”. This combination highlights two different but related aspects in the speaker’s attempt to take both the speaker’s and the interlocutor’s face into consideration when refusing. The provision of a reason stresses the speaker’s attempt to diminish the disruptive impact of the refusal by explaining the non-compliance. At the same time, the provision of an alternative focuses on the interlocutor’s desire or need, and presents an alternative to the interlocutor. Speakers co-operate with the interlocutor in his/her aim of realizing his/her goal by expatiating upon the reason why the compliance was not possible or desirable and by bringing up possible substitutions based on the reasoning behind the interlocutor’s original request. The provision of a reason thus emphasizes the justification for the speaker’s non-compliance, and the provision of an alternative implies that speakers are trying to satisfy the interlocutor’s desire or need. To conclude, reason was the most preferred strategy in adult refusal. However, the selection of a specific strategy or combination of strategies is mediated by the type of the initiating act and the social factors, and most importantly, adults regard the need to maintain their own and other’s face as much as possible, which can be reflected in their choices of refusal strategy.
The provision of an alternative when refusing was also evaluated by Gu (1990),
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who suggested that the notion of “respectfulness” and “modesty” lead to the proffering of an alternative, and thus softened the force of a refusal. To give a direct refusal is the most direct form of refusal and is sometimes considered to be the most effective. The prior consideration in adult refusal is to minimize the face-threatening force of the refusal and people adopt some specific ways to achieve such an end.
Wang (2001) also investigated refusal strategies used by mainland Chinese. The distribution of strategies was examined in terms of different situations, social distances, and status relative to the interlocutor. Based on Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1984, 1989) research on the cross-cultural pragmatics of requests, Wang adopted a discourse-completion-test in which nine scenarios were designed to elicit refusals in different conversational contexts. The data were collected from 100 mixed-gender undergraduates. Combinations of refusal strategies were analyzed from the perspective of three components of a speech act: a central speech act (CSA), an auxiliary speech act (ASA), and microunits, which were suggested by Blum-Kulka et al. (1984, 1989) and Wood and Kroger (1994).2 The findings were quite similar to those of previous studies. Furthermore, Wang found that certain extra strategies were used to strengthen or soften the effect of CSA as an ASA, such as gratitude, positive opinion, and pick-up repetitions3. The findings also indicate that adults apply a variety
2 We adopt the framework of Blum-Kulka’s (1984, 1989) and Wood & Kroger’s (1994) in this study.
For a detailed description, please refer to the discussion of the analytical framework in Chapter 3.
3 Pick-up repetition means that the speaker refuses by repeating part of the interlocutor’s utterance.
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of linguistic devices to function as microunits to soften the effect of face-threatening effects. The microunits can be categorized into four types.
(6) A. Address forms: titles, names or roles
Example Sorry, brother, I have too much schoolwork to do.
B. Indicative marker: indicate who the refuser is personally or impersonally.
Example Company policy prohibits the use of computers for anything but business.
C. Syntactic structure: the transformation of declarative and interrogative forms;
active and passive voices.
Example …but this book can’t be borrowed.
D. Lexical items: appealers, downgraders4, discourse markers and some orthographic downgrading.5
The findings showed that adults operate different strategies to perform the speech act of refusal. To refuse successfully requires the manipulation of three components of a speech act. First, a CSA should be executed clearly to realize the refusal. Second, an ASA contributes to the accomplishment of the CSA. Lastly, some microunits may be used to supplement an increase in the force of a CSA or ASA. Also, while it is not
Davidson (1987) considered that repetition functions to show respect and save face for the interlocutor.
4 Downgraders contribute to decrease the effect of what they modify such as “please” in “could you please reschedule it?”
5 Subjects used orthographic punctuation markers to show the strength of their utterance, e.g., “No, you fucked up already! Get out!!!”
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necessary to manipulate these three components at the same time, we can detect the interaction of these refusal strategies from the evidence of the relationships among these three components.
As observed in previous studies, the refusal strategies used by children and adults are different in two respects. As the findings suggest, adult refusal strategies are far more complicated at the semantic and functional levels. In regard to the nature of the refusal strategies, “reason” occurred more frequently than other strategies in both adult and children’s refusal. While “direct refusal” was the most frequently used strategy in children’s talk, it seldom occurred in adult uses of refusal. When children get older, they began to use more tactful ways to say NO. Giving a reason to dissuade the interlocutor to accept the opposition seemed to work more successfully than just saying “NO”. When adults refuse, they adopt more than one strategy to assure the achievement of being able to refuse indirectly and acceptably.
From the functional perspective, the apparent difference between children’s and adult refusal is that children express their own willingness more often than considering the necessity to save the face of their interlocutors; however, in the adult world, refusal should be polite and take the other’s needs and desires into account.
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Chapter 3 Methodology