Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.2 Children’s refusal
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differences in culture and social factors still affect their choice of refusal strategies.
2.2 Children’s refusal
Children’s refusal can be explored in the literature of conflict talk. Conflict talk is also termed “disputes” (Slomkowski and Dunn, 1992), “adversative episodes,”
(Eisenberg and Garvey, 1981) or “arguments” (Dunn, 1996; Maynard, 1985). Conflict
is defined as a sequence that begins with an opposition to a request for action, an assertion, or an action and ends with a resolution or dissipation of the conflict. The oppositions include refusals, disagreements, denials, and objections (Eisenberg and Garvey, 1981). Since refusals are one of the elements in conflict talk, a review of studies on conflict talk is necessary.
Many researchers have explored the conflict talk between children and their peers. Eisenberg and Garvey’s study (1981) was based on the analysis of videotapes
of peer interaction among preschool children. Conflict talks produced by a total of 88 same- and mixed-gender dyads of 2- to 5-years-olds were examined. An analysis of the episodes showed that children encode their negating response in five ways as follows:
(1) Using a simple negation (e.g. “No” or “Uh-uh”)
(2) Supplying a related reason or justification, with or without an explicit negative
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(3) Making a countering move such as proposing an alternative or a substitution for the desired object
(4) Temporizing, such as postponing compliance or agreement
(5) Evading or hedging by addressing the propositional content of the antecedent The results showed that among these strategies, children used reasons in their initial opposition most frequently (approximately 50% of the time), followed by simple negation, countering, temporizing, and evasion. Eisenberg and Garvey also
investigated the strategies used following initial opposition. The results indicated that when children applied “adaptive” strategies, namely, the strategies that take into
account the perspective of both participants in the interaction, such as compromising or giving reasons, they are most likely to reach a resolution.
Conflict between children and their parents has also been widely investigated.
Dunn and Munn (1987) studied children’s development of justification in dispute with their mothers and siblings at 18, 24, and 36 months of age. Children used justifications in about one third of their disputes with both mother and sibling by 36
months, chiefly in terms of their own feelings, but also in terms of social rules and the material consequences of actions. Moreover, children’s emotional behavior and use of
justification differed according to the topic of the dispute.
Other research conducted by Eisenberg (1992) examined the conflicts between
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mothers and their 4-year-old children. Eisenberg’s study provided descriptive information about what mothers and children argued about, what types of speech acts were opposed, when they use justifications, what kind of initial opposition they used, and what kind of outcome they usually achieved. The results revealed that conflicts involving noncompliance included more justifications. In addition, children seemed to understand the social rule regarding the necessity of providing justification when opposing. They were less likely to pursue their position when mothers provided reasons or alternatives than when mothers used only unelaborated opposition.
Cultural differences in negotiation styles and topics of conflict were reported in previous studies about children’s conflict talk. Tardif (1997) compared the literature on the conflict between Beijing toddlers (M = 22 months) and their mothers with the conflict between English-speaking children and their mothers. The results indicated that the topics of conflict as well as the strategies applied by mothers and children
were different in these two cultures. For example, Mandarin-speaking children were more likely to use the strategy of not responding or ignoring their caregivers’ requests
than they were to refuse or disobey.
Recently, a number of studies examined children’s production of refusals
explicitly as a speech act. Children started to refuse at a very young age. Refusing allows children to exercise more control over their social environment (Wenar, 1982).
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On the one hand, children use refusals to resist what they dislike. On the other hand, they use refusals to choose what they want. The ability to refuse increased as children got older, and they learned refusal strategies by observing people around them, including parents, teachers, peers, and strangers (Liao, 1994).
Guidetti (2000) analyzed the gestural and verbal forms of agreement and refusal messages in young French children aged 21 to 27 months to see whether they varied
with the age and type of speech act (assertive or directive). Agreements and refusals were elicited by asking children two kinds of questions: assertives (“Is it an X?”) and directives (“Should I give you the X?”). The children’s responses were classified into
four categories: expected responses (correct ones), opposite responses (incorrect ones), other responses (correct but unconventional), and nonresponses. Refusals may be presented in three forms: gestural, verbal, and combined gestural-verbal. The results showed that the older children more often responded as expected, even when the difference between the two age groups was only six months. In addition, children used more verbal responses than the other two forms, especially when making refusals.
Several studies have investigated refusals produced by children in Taiwan. Guo (2001) conducted a case study to observe the pragmatic development of a Taiwanese-speaking boy from age 1;11 to 2;10. Requests, refusals, and turn-taking in
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the conversation between the child and adults were examined in her study. From the data collected, refusals produced by the child were classified into five categories:
direct refusals (without any explanation), reasons, changing the topic, a combination of direct refusal and a reason, and a combination of direct refusal and changing the
topic. The findings revealed that the child used direct refusals most frequently (74%), which suggested that he did not usually consider the refusee’s face when refusing; he
simply expressed his unwillingness. The child sometimes used both verbal and
nonverbal expressions such as shaking his head to show refusal. Moreover, when the child’s refusals were turned down by adults again and again, he tended to abandon
verbal expressions and use different actions such as crying or hitting in an effort to make adults accept his refusals. Wu (2010) examined the refusals produced by one Mandarin-speaking boy from age 2;7 to 3;7 in mother-and-child conversations. The
findings revealed that his refusal strategies developed with age. His use of direct refusals decreased as he grew older. It was also observed that his ability to take others’
perspectives into account increased over time.
Some studies discussed the refusal production in older children. Liao (1994)
conducted several experiments to investigate children’s communicative competence in refusing. First, she examined the children’s understanding of tautologous construction,
such as 好是好 ‘good is good’, in refusals. Elementary school children aged seven to
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eleven years old were asked to fill out the Discourse Completion Test (DCT), which includes items of tautology. The results indicated that eight-year-old children are able to understand this complex construction. In addition, from the answers children provided in the DCT, it was found that at the age of 13, girls used the strategy of putting the blame on the third party more often than boys did. Liao also asked children to rank the politeness of four utterances of offering alternatives as refusal.
The rankings given by children of eight years old or older were consistent with those given by adults. Therefore, they were as good as adults in judging the relative politeness of utterances. In another experiment, Liao compared the strategies
elementary school children, junior high school students, and adults used when refusing the utterance, “Go to the office to get the compositions and bring them back to the class.” The results showed that most elementary school children and adults used
lying, making excuses, giving reasons, or explaining. Furthermore, significantly more elementary school children than adults used composite strategies.
Yang (2003) investigated the refusal production and perception of children and the influence of social factors such as gender and social status on refusal production and politeness perception. One hundred and eighty Mandarin-speaking subjects of kindergarten and elementary ages were chosen for the study. Sections of cartoons that included invitations and requests were shown to the subjects to elicit their refusals.
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Each speech act included three social statuses of the refuser relative to the refusee:
low, equal, and high. Results indicated that age had a great influence on refusal production. Older children produced more strategies and more words when refusing.
Children also generated more indirect refusals and reasons as they got older. In addition, the children’s refusal production was influenced by sociolinguistic
background and gender. Children from lower social class families performed better than children from higher social class families and applied more refusal strategies.
Female children produced more words in refusal responses and used alternatives, adjuncts, and avoidance more than male children. Yang also observed that children are aware of social status and the power that goes along with it. Children applied different refusal strategies when they were of a different social status relative to the addressee.
Yang (2004) conducted similar research to investigate the interactions between individual factors (gender, popularity, and IQ) and children’s refusals. Refusals were
obtained by asking 201 fifth graders to finish the Discourse Completion Test. The influences of gender, popularity, and IQ on refusal strategies were reported in her study. Girls were more polite than boys when refusing others. More popular students seemed to focus more on relationships of equal ranking than less popular students did.
They tended to be polite to people of equal status. Students with higher IQs tended to use more words and the strategy of “negated ability” in their refusals compared to
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students with lower IQs. Therefore, the author suggested that teachers should encourage less popular and lower-IQ students to show more politeness in their refusals in order to improve their personal relationships.
Both the literature concerning children’s conflict talk and refusals provide us some knowledge about children’s refusal production. Previous studies have investigated children of different age groups, from one year old to elementary school age. The results showed that children’s refusal strategies become more complex and indirect when children grow older. Children shift from mainly rely on simple negation to various indirect strategies such as reason, alternatives, or postponement, etc.
Besides, children’s refusal is found to be sensitive to social factors such as gender or social status. Although several studies have been conducted to examine the refusal production by Mandarin-speaking children, the data collection method – using cartoons or questionnaires to elicit refusals – is limiting and may bias the results.
Since the situations were not authentic, the results may not accurately reflect children’s real-life performance in making refusals.