Understanding refusal style and pragmatic competence of teenage Cantonese English learners in refusals: An exploratory study
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Cynthia Lee is Associate Professor at the Centre for Applied English Studies, the University of Hong Kong. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses and supervises PhD students. She has conducted research projects related to L2 pragmatics and language education. Her research interests include interlanguage pragmatic development, tutor–tutee discourse and learning in L2 writing consultations, automated feedback on L2 writing, and second-language acquisition and pedagogy. Her research articles have appeared in internationally refereed journals and books.
Abstract
The paper investigates the refusal style of teenage Cantonese learners of English in terms of strategy use, pattern, order, and content of refusals’ semantic formulae quantitatively and qualitatively, and discusses learners’ pragmatic competence and refusal style with reference to that of adult native Mandarin Chinese (L1) speakers and Chinese English learners reported in the literature. One hundred fifty-six Cantonese English learners aged between 14 and 18, studying in Form 2, Form 4, and Form 6, participated in the study. Refusals to requests were collected using five closed role plays in which sociolinguistic variables were controlled. It was found that three indirect refusal patterns were generally used by the three age groups across situations, with the strategy of giving a specific reason being dominant. Only the difference in use of single strategy was statistically significant (p < 0.05). The frequency rate of refusing directly decreased when age and language-learning exposure increased. The older teenage learners refused more indirectly than the young ones. The indirect-with-specific-reason refusal style for requests is consistent with the indirect Chinese communication style of adult native Chinese speakers and Chinese English learners. In addition, the direct-then-indirect development in L2 refusals is similar to that in L2 requests and complaints expressed by young Cantonese English learners, and there are some signs of L1 pragmatic transfer. Teenage learners were able to show sociopragmatic competence by using different refusal strategies in face of different request natures and relationships with interlocutors. However, their pramalinguistic resources were limited, and adjuncts did not exist.
Funding statement: Funding: The study is part of the outcome of a General Research Fund project (No. 242507) funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council. I am very grateful to the students and teachers who participated in and provided assistance in the study.
About the author
Cynthia Lee is Associate Professor at the Centre for Applied English Studies, the University of Hong Kong. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses and supervises PhD students. She has conducted research projects related to L2 pragmatics and language education. Her research interests include interlanguage pragmatic development, tutor–tutee discourse and learning in L2 writing consultations, automated feedback on L2 writing, and second-language acquisition and pedagogy. Her research articles have appeared in internationally refereed journals and books.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Uncommon ground
- Toward a typology of constative speech acts: Actions beyond evidentiality, epistemic modality, and factuality
- A cross-cultural analysis of disagreements in classroom discourse: Comparative case studies from England, the United States, and Israel
- Understanding refusal style and pragmatic competence of teenage Cantonese English learners in refusals: An exploratory study
- Forum
- Creating meso-contexts: The functions of metapragmatic expressions in argumentative TV talk shows
- Book Reviews
- Louise Cummings: Pragmatic disorders
- Deborah Tannen and Anna Marie Trester: Discourse 2.0: Language and new media
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Uncommon ground
- Toward a typology of constative speech acts: Actions beyond evidentiality, epistemic modality, and factuality
- A cross-cultural analysis of disagreements in classroom discourse: Comparative case studies from England, the United States, and Israel
- Understanding refusal style and pragmatic competence of teenage Cantonese English learners in refusals: An exploratory study
- Forum
- Creating meso-contexts: The functions of metapragmatic expressions in argumentative TV talk shows
- Book Reviews
- Louise Cummings: Pragmatic disorders
- Deborah Tannen and Anna Marie Trester: Discourse 2.0: Language and new media
