Refusing in a foreign language: An investigation of problems encountered by Chinese learners of English

Abstract

Whereas the speech act of refusal is universal across language, the politeness value and the types of linguistic forms used to perform it vary across language and culture. The majority of the comparative pragmatic research findings were derived from one single source of data (i.e., either production data or perception data). Few attempts have been made to collect different sources of data to triangulate the findings. This study attempts to fill this gap by examining the problems that Chinese learners of English encounter when performing refusal responses through the comparison of production and perception data between an NS group and a Chinese learners of English group. The results showed that one major problem found in Chinese EFL learners' production and perception regarding refusing in English involved their relying on the indirect L1 communication style manifested in the less frequent use of direct refusal strategies and frequent use of excuse/reason with specific and significant details in L2 refusals. The other major problem in Chinese EFL learners' refusal responses concerned the ungrammatical sentences and inaccurate word choice, which often caused confusion.