A Study of Refusals to Requests of Taiwanese Elementary School Children

• Main Authors: Tsun-Ching Yang, 楊圳卿
• Other Authors: Yu-Fang Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/x854pt

碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 英國語文學系研究所 === 92 === The aim of this study is to explore the interactions between individual factors and refusals to requests from people of different social status among Taiwanese children by means of Discourse Completion Test. A total of 201 fifth graders in an elementary school responded to the questionnaire. Gender, popularity and IQ were independent variables; refusal strategies, the number of refusal words, the number of refusal strategies and adjuncts were dependent variables. The questionnaire contained three situations for participants to refuse requests given by those of high, equal and low social status. The results indicate that there are significant differences between individual factors and refusals. (I) Gender refusals: (1) girls in elementary schools tend to show more politeness to refuse high, equal and low rankings than boys do; and (2) both girls and boys in elementary schools refuse higher ranking with more politeness. (II) Among the more and less popular students’ refusals: (1) the more popular students in elementary schools seem to focus more on the relationship of equal ranking than the less popular students do, which means the more popular students win popularity by means of being more polite to their peers; they are affected in their peer group; (2) the more popular students tend to express their questioning or give a lesson to equal ranking more than the less popular students do; (3) the more popular students employ more politeness to refuse higher ranking; and (4) the less popular students employ the most politeness in refusing high ranking, second, to refuse low ranking, and least, to refuse equal ranking. (III) Among the high and low IQ students’ refusals: (1) the high IQ students in elementary schools may use their high IQ to learn to refuse requests with more words than the low IQ students do; (2) the high IQ students tend to use more negated ability (unable to do) as a refusal to show politeness to refuse high, equal and low rankings than the low IQ students do; (3) the high IQ students employ more politeness to refuse higher ranking; and (4) the low IQ students show the most politeness in refusing high ranking and seem to show no significant differences in refusing equal and low rankings.