Iranian EFL learners’ sociolinguistic competence: Refusal strategies in focus

Year 2014, Volume: 10 Issue: 2, 48 - 66, 31.12.2014

Seyyed hatam Tamimi Sa'd Mohammad Mohammadi

Abstract

The current study investigated the extent to which Iranian EFL learners are sociolinguistically competent in performing the speech act of refusal. The data were elicited form a sample of 30 Iranian EFL learners, 15 males and 15 females, who responded to situations in a discourse completion task (DCT). The results indicated that the three most frequent refusal strategies are ‘excuse, reason, explanation’, ‘non-performative statement’ and ‘statement of regret’. The findings revealed the participants’ tendency toward positive and negative politeness in refusing. Regarding gender, Chi-square analyses revealed no significant differences between males and females in the use of both politeness strategies and refusal strategies. The refusal utterances were also rated by two native English speakers on a three-point politeness Likert scale (1: Polite, 2: Partially polite and 3: Impolite). The rating was that out of the 148 utterances (i.e., 82% of the entire sample of refusal utterances being 180 utterances), only 43 refusals, accounting for 29%, had been rated as ‘Polite’, with the remaining 105 utterances rated as either ‘Partially polite’ or ‘Impolite’. The analysis of the content of the refusal semantic formulas included elements of both politeness and impoliteness. Elements that contributed to appropriacy included indirectness, certain syntactic and lexical structures, intensification, among others while the elements of impoliteness were length of the semantic formulas (both shortness and verbosity), lack of total redress, mitigation and politeness markers, among other things. In general, the participants were found to be in need of improvement in the appropriate realization of refusal.

Keywords

appropriacy, EFL learners, politeness, refusal, sociolinguistic competence

References

• Abdul Sattar, H. Q., Lah, S. C.,& Suleiman, R. R. R. (2011).Refusal strategies in English by Malay university students. GEMA Online™ Journal of Language Studies, 1(3), 69-81.
• Aksoyalp, Y. (2009). A cross-cultural investigation of refusals by Turkish-speaking EFL learners: A case study. Unpublished Master Thesis, Eastern Mediterranean University. North Cyprus.
• Al-Kahtani, S. A. W. (2005). Refusals realizations in three different cultures: A speech act theoretically-based cross-cultural study. Journal of King Saud University, 18, 35-57.
• Allami, H., & Naeimi, A. (2011). A cross-linguistic study of refusals: An analysis of pragmatic competence development in Iranian EFL learners. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 385-406.
• Austin, J. P. M. (1987). The dark side of politeness: A pragmatic analysis of non-cooperative communication. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Canterbury. New Zealand.
• Brown, R., & Gilman, A. (1960).The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), Style in language (pp. 253-276). USA: MIT Press.
• Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge:
• Cambridge University Press. Chodorowska-Pilch, M. (2008). Verás in Peninsular Spanish as a grammaticalized discourse marker invoking positive and negative politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 1357-1372.
• Doughty, C. J. (2005). Instructed SLA: Constraints, compensation and enhancement. In C. J. Doughty,
• & M. H. Long (Eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 256-310). USA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Farnia, M., & Wu, X. (2012).An intercultural communication study of Chinese and Malaysian university students’ refusal to invitation. International Journal of English Linguistics, 2(1), 162-1
• Hassani, R., Mardani, M., & Dastjerdi, H. V. (2011). A comparative study of refusals: Gender distinction and social status in focus. The International Journal - Language Society and Culture, (32). Retrieved 2013 from www.educ.utas.edu.au/users/tle/JOURNAL/.
• Holmes, J. (1989). Sex differences and apologies: One aspect of communicative competence. Applied Linguistics, 10(2), 194-213.
• Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2001). Pragmatics in language teaching. In K. R. Rose, & G. Kasper
• (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 1-9). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kwon, J. (2004). Expressing refusals in Korean and in American English. Multilingua, 23, 339-364.
• Levinson, S. C. (1997). Pragmatics. USA: Cambridge University Press.
• Lingli, D., & Wannaruk, A. (2010).The effects of explicit and implicit instruction in English refusals.
• Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 33(3), 93-109. Littlewood, W. (2007). Second language learning. In A. Davies, & C. Elder (Eds.), The handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 501-524). USA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
• Martínez-Flor, A., & Usó-Juan, E. (2011). Research methodologies in pragmatics: Eliciting refusals to requests. ELIA, 11, 47-87.
• Morkus, N. (2009). The realization of the speech act of refusal in Egyptian Arabic by American learners of Arabic as a foreign language. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of South Florida. USA.
• Nelson, G. L., Al Batal, M., & El Bakary, W. (2002). Directness vs. indirectness: Egyptian Arabic and US English communication style. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 26, 39-57.
• Ogiermann, E. (2009). On apologizing in negative and positive politeness cultures. The Netherlands:
• John Benjamins Publishing Company. Schiffrin, A. (2005). Modelling speech acts in conversational discourse. Unpublished Doctoral
• Dissertation, The University of Leeds, England. Silva, A. J. B. D. (2003). The effects of instruction on pragmatic development: Teaching polite refusals in English. Second Language Studies, 22(1), 55-106.
• Umale, J. (2011). Pragmatic failure in refusal strategies: British versus Omani interlocutors. Arab
• World English Journal, 2(1), 18-46. Verschueren, J. (2003). Understanding pragmatics. London: Arnold.
• Wannaruk, A. (2008). Pragmatic transfer in Thai EFL refusals. Regional Language Centre Journal, 39(3), 318-337.
• Yang, J. (2008). How to say ‘no’ in Chinese: A pragmatic study of refusal strategies in five TV series.
• Proceedings of the 20th North American conference on Chinese linguistics, 2, 1041-1058.