Refusal Strategies by Taiwanese and Vietnamese Students -- A Pragmatic Study

• Main Authors: Po-Chen Ho, 何柏辰
• Other Authors: Hsiao-Tzu Yang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/09070844844724371242

碩士 === 國立雲林科技大學 === 應用外語系碩士班 === 101 === The study investigates the refusal strategies used by Taiwanese and Vietnamese students in their native languages. Sixty people participated in this study, including thirty Taiwanese and thirty Vietnamese, both groups from a university in central Taiwan. The participants were given a discourse completion test (DCT) developed by Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990), in which they were instructed to write down their refusal responses to this open-ended questionnaire as they would respond in real-life conversation. Their responses were further decoded based on the classification of refusals (Beebe et al., 1990). The results indicated that both Taiwanese and Vietnamese participants shared all refusal strategies, yet differed in usage frequency, especially in refusal adjuncts. Also, their socio-economic backgrounds could influence their refusals. The participants from higher income families were more likely to use fewer strategies regardless of their nationality. On the contrary, the participants from lower income families tended to use more strategies. Other social factors such as region and gender may also influence the number of their strategy use. Possible explanations of the results were discussed, and suggestions for follow-up research were also provided.