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explained the reason for non-compliance or showed his negated ability in a refusal.
These strategies belong to other-oriented arguments. We adopted these two types of arguments to examine the child’s refusal responses and some findings were as the following. First, there is a strategy shift from 2; 7 to 3; 1. At 2; 7, in addition to the great amount of direct refusals, the child also manipulated self-oriented arguments to present his refusal such as insisting on continuing in the performance of his current activity. At 3; 1, he started to apply other-oriented arguments to refuse such as giving an alternative or a reason. According to Fyre & Moore (1991); Perner (1991) and Wellman (1990), there are major developmental changes between the age of 3 and 5 in children’s grasp of other’s inner states. It could be inferred that a preliminary understanding of another’s inner state has influenced the child’s in determining the way to refuse and that this could be reflected in his use of arguments as refusal strategies.
4.3 The child’s refusals at 3; 7
At 3; 7, 38 tokens of refusal responses were identified. Table 3 shows the refusal strategies involved.
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Table 3. The realization of the child’s refusals at 3; 7
Strategy Number of token Percentage (%)
Direct refusal 12 31.6
Silence 4 10.5
Unrelated answer 3 7.9
Insistence 1 2.7
Reason 10 26.3
Dissuade the interlocutor 2 5.3
Alternative 2 5.3
Negated ability 2 5.3
Verbal avoidance 2 5.3
Total 38 100.2
Among the three temporal points, the child’s refusal strategies at 3; 7 are the most diversified distribution. From Table 3, direct refusal is still the most frequently used strategy to refuse, but the percentage has dropped increasingly with the age. In addition to those strategies adopted at 2; 7 and 3; 1, the child applied the strategy of dissuading his interlocutor to refuse. Example 13 illustrates how the dissuasion occurred.
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‘If I pick up too many cars, they will fall down.’
When the child was requested to get a toy car by himself (Line 1), he referred to the consequence that the other cars would fall down to dissuade his mother from asking him to do so (Line 3). In addition, he addressed his mother as ‘Mama’ at the beginning. (Line 2). Liao (1994) observed that it is more polite to use the address form than not, even the speaker has already drawn the hearer’s attention. Therefore the addressed form ‘mama’ is viewed as a linguistic device to show politeness and decrease the power of a face threatening act. According to the data collected at 3; 7, the child’s use of dissuasion usually related to a negative consequence that his mother did not want it to happen. Consider another example.
Example 14.
1.MOT: 我要黃色的那一台.
‘I want the yellow one’
2.CHI: 那你就要自己一個人開囉.
‘Alright, you have to drive the car by yourself’
In Example 14, the mother and the child were playing a game and they wanted to drive a car together. The mother chose the yellow one; however, the child preferred another one. Therefore, when the child was requested to pick up the yellow car, he came up with the possibility that the mother drive the car by herself. The child
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cancelled his participation in the act of co-operation in driving the car to dissuade his
mother, and thus shifted the focus of the act of the refusal from himself to his mother.
If the mother didn’t want the consequencedriving alone, she needed to pick another
car except the yellow one, which would invalidate her previous request. (Line1) The strategy of dissuading the interlocutor may be categorized as other-oriented argument (Dunn, 1991) since it takes account of the hearer’s needs and desires in an attempt to conciliate or to settle a possible conflict. Dissuading the interlocutor is different from the strategy of alternative, which provides a positive incentive to persuade the hearer, in that a negative consequence is provided to achieve the goal of refusal. In addition, the use of the strategy of dissuading the interlocutor did not violate the four conditions as apparently as did reason or negated ability. However, dissuading is indirectly related to the first condition—S wants H to do A, since it provides the negative consequence of doing A. If the speaker wants A to happen, a negative consequence would accompany the execution of the requested A. In other words, dissuading the interlocutor decreases the desire of S, and thus refuses accordingly.
According to previous studies (Liao, 1994; Chen et al., 1995), adults prefer to combine strategies to eliminate the face-threatening effect and show politeness when refusing. At 3; 7, the child combined strategies to perform his refusals. Consider the following example.
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3.CHI: 0 [= laughing and screaming].4.CHI: 媽媽 # 等 一下.
‘Mama, wait a minute.’
5.CHI: 我們 去 騎 馬.
‘Let’s ride the horse.’
In Example 15, the mother asked the child to massage her. In addition to using the imperative form 快點幫我捶背‘Give me a massage!’ (Line 1), the mother also grabbed the child’s pants to reinforce the power of her request. The child rejected his mother’s request by avoiding providing a direct response to the proposed action 等一 下 (verbal avoidance) first and by then providing an alternative 我們去騎馬 and
adopted the linguistic device of ‘mama’ to modify his refusal (Line 4 and 5). The child’s combination of strategies also sheds light on his pragmatic development. In Example 15, the power of the mother’s request was increased by her use of a physical action, grabbing the child’s pants. We have previously discussed the child’s refusal performance at 3; 1 in such a context. Reconsider Example 12.
Example 12
1.MOT: 把球給我
‘Give me the ball.’
*sit: MOT tried to take the ball by force
2.CHI: 這個還給你嘛!
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The similarity between two examples is that the power of the mother’s request was strengthened by her body language, while the child responded differently at these two time points. At 3; 1, he used a single strategy—alternative to respond, and at 3; 7, he combined verbal avoidance and alternative together to perform his refusal. It can be inferred that, first, that the child could perceive the power of the mother’s request, and so adjust his way to refuse it. At 3; 1, the child used a more skillful strategy—alternative when he faced his mother’s strong request. Nevertheless, at 3; 7, it appeared that the child combined strategies to increase the effectiveness when he dealt with a similar context. At 3; 7, the child’s politeness was reflected in his form of address and his use of refusal strategies, and he adopted combination of strategies to reinforce the effectiveness of his refusal when facing a more compulsory request.
Apart from the compulsiveness of the request, other factors also trigger the child’s combination of strategies at 3; 7. Consider the following example.
Example 16.
1.MOT: 我跟你講說
‘I told you that…’
2.MOT: 你用書包去裝很多車車出來.
‘You can use your book bag to carry lots of cars out.’
3.CHI: 媽媽幫我裝. Alternative ‘Mama, help me put them in.’
4.MOT: 我不要.
‘I don’t want to.’
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‘If you want to play with the cars,you have to take carry them by yourself’
‘I’m afraid that they will fall out.’
9.MOT: 不會不會.
‘They won’t.’
10.MOT: 你力氣很大
‘You are strong’
11.MOT: 你自己去拿.
‘You can carry them on your own’
12.CHI: 我沒有力氣 Negated ability
Example 16 presents a negotiation sequence between the child and his mother. It includes three request tokens by the mother and three refusal tokens by the child. At first, the mother wanted the child to take his toy cars out of his book bag by himself (Line 2, Request token 1). Then the child refused with an alternative ‘help me to put them in’ in an imperative form and with the use of the address form ‘mama’ in the beginning in line 3 (Refusal token 1). After being faced with the child’s non-compliance, the mother refused the child’s suggestion with a direct refusal and referred to the general rule ‘If you want to play with the cars, you have to carry them
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by yourself’ to justify her previous request (Line 4~5, Request token 2). According to Garvey (1974), adult conversation employs more devious means of getting an addressee to do something. Speakers can indicate a desire or need for some state of affairs without actually saying that the hearers are to bring about that state. In a given situation, these utterances count as an attempt to get the addressee to do something.
These cases are called “inferred request” (Garvey, 1974). Here, in Example 16, although the mother’s justification didn’t apparently request the child to take the cars out, it indeed implied that the child had to carry the cars on his own. Moreover, the mother’s direct refusal not only refused the child’s suggestion ‘help me take them out’, but also invoked the point that the mother’s original request was still valid.
After the mother’s inferred request, the child replied with a combination of his inability ‘I can’t take anymore’ and tried to dissuade his mother with the consequence
‘they will fall down’ in utterance Lines 6-8 ( Refusal token 2). An inferred request is more complicated than a direct request since it requires cognitive operations of inference for the interpretation of the inferred request. The child’s combination mirrors that he can perceive the inferred request and that he inferred what he was expected to do and he thus adjusted his way to refuse. The child’s perception of inferred requests supports Shatz’s claim that children as young as 2 interpret inferred requests correctly as requests for action. The complexity and strength of the mother’s
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request invoked the child’s use of the combination of strategies.
After the child explained his non-compliance with his negated ability and proposed a possible bad consequence, the mother at first rejected these arguments.
The mother’s clarification of 不會不會 ‘They won’t’ and 你力氣很大 ‘You are strong’ in line 9 and 10 can validate her original request since they cancelled the bad consequence and denied the child’s inability. In addition, the mother requested the child to carry the cars (你自己去拿) in Line 11 (Request token 3), and the child refused with a combination of three strategies, Negated ability, Reason and Dissuade the interlocutor (Refusal token 3). The complexity and strength of the mother’s request affected the child’s refusal responses as we discussed previously.
However, the power of the mother’s request could be increased in another way.
According to Garvey (1974), the force of the request appears to hold increasingly throughout the clarification exchanges. The clarifications following the original request indeed provide the reason for the request and thus strengthen the assumption that speaker wants the hearer to do something. In the exchange in Example 16, the mother’s clarification in the three request tokens provided a general rule to account for her request, denied the fact of the child’s inability, and cancelled the possibility of a bad consequence. Through the clarifications of these exchanges, the four conditions of a sincere request were consolidated accordingly and thus the power of the mother’s
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request was strengthened increasingly. Therefore, in a given course of interaction, the position of the request may also assign force to the power of the request. In Example 16, the request 你自己去拿 ‘you carry them on your own’ in Line 11 carries more power than in Line 2 and the child’s combination of refusal strategies also provides evidence for his understanding of the strengthened power of the mother’s request.
From the sequence above, it can be inferred that the more complicated and powerful the mother’s request is, the more possible it is that the child will combine strategies if he seeks to refuse. It can also be inferred that the child’s major device to increase the effectiveness of his refusals is to combine strategies when making refusals.
As Example 16 provides a sequence of negotiation between the mother and the child, Figure 4 will illustrate how the mother and the child respond to each other.
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Figure 4 Sequences that involve reformulated request refusal responses at 3; 7 As discussed in the previous section, the strategies used by the mother in the reformulation of requests can be divided into three types: aggravation, mitigation, and