PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE: REFUSAL SPEECH ACT BY IRANIAN STUDENTS IN SWEDEN
Abstract
Understanding cross-cultural differences plays a crucial role in communication and
successful cross-cultural communications depends on various factors such as
pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics. Many researchers focus more on the aspect of
pragmatics such as speech acts. The present study is a contrastive study of refusal speech act.
The aim of this study is to investigate the pragmatic transfer in the speech act of refusal and
then find similarities and differences between the speech acts of refusal in response to an
invitation, request, offer and suggestion in various social contexts in two languages and
cultures. This study was conducted by Iranian students in Gothenburg who utilize both
Persian as their first language and English as their second language. 24 Iranian students
completed a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) that included 12 situations by submitting
written refusals to 3 invitations, 3 requests, 3 offers and 3 suggestions. The data were then
coded based on the classification of refusal speech act by Beebe et al. (1990). The results
were compared with the results of another study in which Iranian students were compared
with 10 American native speakers of English cited in Abed’ study (2011). The results show
that in terms of frequency of refusal strategies, both Iranian students and American native
speakers of English like to utilize more indirect refusal strategies. The Iranian female students
utilized more refusal strategies to show more politeness than the Iranian male students.
Furthermore, analysis revealed that both Iranian male students and Iranian female students
utilized address terms and that the Iranian female students utilized religious expressions while
the Iranian male students did not.
Degree
Student essay
View/ Open
Date
2023-04-19Author
Shatery, Kazhal
Keywords
English
culture
speech act of refusal
pragmatic
pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics
politeness theory
refusal strategies
Series/Report no.
SPL 2022-018, magisteruppsats, engelska
Language
eng