Refusal strategies in Turkish and English: a cross-cultural study

Abstract

This study examines the use of refusal strategies by Turkish EFL speakers in comparison with native speakers of English and Turkish. Considering refusals as a face-threatening act (Brown & Levinson, 1987), the study explores semantic formulas of refusals in a discourse completion test with six different situations. In doing so, the analysis of the data draws on both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of pragmatic competence (Thomas, 1983). A total of 45 participants were involved in the study. The findings demonstrated that both Turkish EFL speakers and native speakers of Turkish and English utilized a wide range of refusal strategies (N=688 in total). Similar to previous studies, explanations or reasons were the most frequent semantic category among 21 refusal strategies in this study. However, the analysis of the data for the status of the interlocutors and the content of the semantic formulas as well as the directness/indirectness revealed divergence in the use of refusal strategies across groups. Finally, the study provides pedagogical implications and recommendations for future directions. Keywords: pragmatic competence, refusals, linguistic politeness, EFL speakers, speech acts