本论文对英汉拒绝言语语用策略进行了对比研究，文中不仅涉及英汉语言文化对比，也涉及跨语域对比，即私人交往拒绝言语与商业购物拒绝言语的对比。

全文共分四章。第一章介绍了对比研究理论的历史及发展，并对国内外主要学者在私人交往中总结出的英汉（日）拒绝策略进行概述，为本论文商业购物英汉拒绝言语对比研究奠定基础。第二章讨论了商业购物拒绝言语策略对比研究项目的目标、调查对象、问卷调查设计及数据的采集和分析，并重点进行跨文化、跨语域的相关对比分析。第三章从总体上对拒绝言语行为的感知、生产、阐釋和归属进行理论探讨。第四章对论文中心要点进行了总结。

拒绝言语的对比研究目前大多局限在私人交往语域中，国内外学者认为中国人拒绝时使用的拒绝策略比较节省，采用“点到为止”策略，以维护人际关系。采用的一般模式是称呼语加道歉语加拒绝理由。美国人则使用“问题关注”策略，可以自由地使用多种策略，重在解决问题。他们常以表示“愿意”的虚拟式开头，然后说明拒绝理由，最后表示道歉。

本论文研究有助于深化和丰富目前拒绝言语对比研究的理论及其逻辑实证调查。它的创新之处在于该论文不仅对前人在私人交往中总结出的拒绝假设在商业购物活动中进行跨语言文化论证，而且对私人交往和商业购物中的拒绝言语进行跨语域对比，总结了商业购物活动中中美惯用的拒绝模式及其策略。该论文的不足之处在于中英测试对象不可能囊括方方面面的个体，中英商业拒绝言语总结出的拒绝模式及其策略还有待于在英汉等其它语言中得到进一步的调查和探索。

Contrastive study has also enjoyed a long history in the west. There are two sources of it: one is from Europe in the 50s, where the contrastive study is firstly made in Russia and then is carried on by the Prague School; the other is from America, where the term of “contrastive linguistics” is put forward by Sapir Whorf in 1941. Sapir and Whorf adopt the approach of contrastive study to interpret the relationship between language and culture, which has later become the famous hypothesis of “linguistic determinism” and “linguistic relativism”. Since then, contrastive study has developed greatly both in theory and application. In 1973, the first international magazine on contrastive study was issued in Poland called Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics and the second called Contrastes was issued in Bulgaria and France. Likewise, contrastive study has also been carried on in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Egypt.

Contrastive study has presented some new trends since the early beginning of the 80th century. Firstly, theoretical researches on it have been enriched, which have been devoted to exploring the causes of the similarities and differences between languages from perspectives of language intra-structures, language typology, language evolution and cognitive thought model; secondly, applied contrastive study focuses on foreign language acquisition, error analysis, and inter-language studies, which contribute much to the foreign language teaching, translation and bilingual lexicography; thirdly, the scope of contrastive study has been extended from traditional scopes of phonetics, lexicology and grammar to discourse analysis and pragmatics, interwoven with the macro-study of society and culture; fourthly, in terms of the methodology, people are more likely to do quantitative analysis, or to combine methods of quantitative and qualitative analyses; lastly, people are beginning to carry on researches on theory and methodology of contrastive study themselves.

Contrastive studies of refusal strategies carried out by the scholars both at home and abroad have mainly been limited to the register of interpersonal communications, and the subjects chosen for studies are mostly in-school students. However, the findings drawn from their cross-linguistic argumentative studies by Beebe & Takahashi, Kumagai, Liao & Bresnahan, Yao Jun and Wang Aihua have contributed a lot to the further studies of the speech act of refusing both in theory and application.

1.2.1 Contrastive Studies of English-Japanese Refusal Strategies by Beebe & Takahashi and Kumagai

　

A related line of contrastive study has examined how people differentiate in adopting different refusal strategies in interpersonal communications. Since the role and nature of the speech act of refusing might be universally similar, only the refusal strategies might vary from one country to another due to different cultures and languages in different countries. Scholars have carried on a series of contrastive studies on the speech act of refusing in terms of different variables. Refusals are generally considered to be dispreferred seconds (Yule, 1996:81) of invitation, request, offering, suggestion or even threatening. They are potentially face-threatening and essentially impolite acts (Levinson, 1983). However, people attempt to “soften” the hardness of this act through social negotiations by employing refusal strategies to felicitate our social communications.

Beebe and his collaborators (e.g., Beebe, Takahashi & Ulisse-Weltz, 1990), focusing on the effect of status on the performance of face-threatening acts of refusals by the Japanese learners of English, have found that the Japanese informants tend to shift their styles more according to interlocutor status than speakers of American English. Although this research still needs to demonstrate how speakers’ socio-pragmatic perceptions change over time, and how such a change is reflected in their linguistic realization patterns, the investigation (Beebe and Takahashi, 1990) indicates that the Japanese tend to express regrets or apologies more frequently to people with higher social status, but less frequently to those with lower social status. The Japanese start refusal with an apology or a statement of regret, followed by an excuse, while the Americans almost always start with an expression of positive opinion such as “ I would like to”, followed by expressing a regret and giving an excuse. Moreover, the Japanese excuses are often much less specific than American ones and, in general, Japanese refusals often sound more formal.

Kumagai (cited from Liao and Bresnahan, 1996:706) also indicates, through his study in 1993, that in remedy for the face-threatening act of refusing, the Japanese take a humble approach by using penitent utterances, while the Americans are self-expressive by using explanatory utterances. In Japan, the very structure of the language requires the speaker to focus on human relationship, whereas Western languages focus on objects and their logical relationships. This means that the Japanese tend to emphasize restoring human relationship while the Americans emphasize solving the problems. Kumagai, through his study in 1993, further points out that this observation seems to be applicable to the explanation of the differences between the Chinese and the Americans as well: the Chinese often refuse not by self-expressive explanatory utterances, but by sticking to one extrinsic reason. For example, in refusing a classmate borrowing class-notes, the Chinese are likely to say: “My class-notes have been lent to somebody else” to tell the requester that they are unable to lend them because the class-notes are unavailable now. The Americans tend to say “sorry” after making excuses, and will perhaps, explain, or state their principle. Mr. Liao (1994) illustrates that this is because both Japan and China belong to oriental cultures whose intercultural communications data back to thousands of years ago. The Japanese inherit a great deal of Chinese tradition, therefore, they are closer when compared with the American cultures.

1.2.2 Contrastive Study of English-Chinese Refusal Strategies by Liao & Bresnahan

　

Chao-chih Liao and Mary I. Bresnahan (1996) have made a contrastive quantitative study on refusal strategies in interpersonal communications by designing six scenarios of requests in Mandarin Chinese and American English. Their studies exclude the business field and the political field, though they think that the findings of the former may be applicable to the latter. The Chinese data are collected from undergraduates in Feng Chia University in Taiwan, and the English from Michigan State University in America. According to the given data about their birthplaces and growing–up places, 570 Chinese subjects from all parts of the Taiwan island, including some islets around Taiwan, together with 516 American subjects from all parts of the United States, are asked to fill in one of the six scenarios, therefore the ordering of them is not a relevant element. The six scenarios are arranged as follows, from rejecting a superior, to the four scenarios of rejecting peers, and to the last of rejecting an inferior:

Your teacher asks you to stay after school to help prepare for a reception for new students. You really have many other things that you need to do. What would you say?

A classmate who regularly misses classes asks to borrow your notes. You would really prefer not to lend them. What would you say?

Your long-time friend asks for your help in moving. You have an important exam coming up. What would you say?

A friend asks to borrow your car to visit his girlfriend’s family in Traverse City. You would really prefer not to lend your car to anyone. What would you say? (American version)

Your good friend asks to borrow your bike to take his girlfriend outing. You would really prefer not to lend your bike to anyone. What would you say? (Chinese version)

You are buying your course books with a friend. He ends up US$ 25 short and asks to borrow this amount. You worry that if your friend can’t repay you, you’ll run out of money before the end of the month. What would you say?

Your younger sister asks to borrow US$500. She promises to pay the money back in 3 months. You only have US$ 1000 in your bank account which you have managed to save for next semester’s tuition. What would you say?

(Liao & Bresnahan, 1996)

Liao & Bresnahan’s contrastive study has been based on the assumption that the Chinese culture is generally believed to be collectively oriented and the American individually oriented, therefore, logic would conclude that the Chinese would be more reluctant to resist compliance, and that collectivism is shown in people’s inability to refuse a family member. For example, Liao’s studies (1994) display that more Chinese, compared with the Americans, feel that their relationship with others is more important than their own accomplishment. They would be more likely to sacrifice their self-interests for the benefit of the group, and their happiness depends more on the happiness of those around them.

The statistical methods used in Liao & Bresnahan’s study (1996) are the non-parametric methods of the Chi-square test and Fisher’s exact test, and the parametric test of analysis of variance. The Chi-square test has limitations. For example, when one or more of the expected values of the compared groups are lower than 5, it may not be a valid test. Of course, if under the situation, the p-value is still bigger than 0.05, this signifies that there is no significant difference between the compared groups. When the expected value is small enough for the SAS package (package of statistical analytic system) to warn about the validity of the Chi-square, and when the Chi-square value is big enough to make the p-value less than 0.05, the Fisher’s exact test will be applied instead. ANOVA (analysis of variance) is used to compare the average number of tokens used by the American men and women, and the Chinese men and women to make inferences. Their statistical methods are too complicated to adopt in this study of refusal strategies in shopping activities. The statistics drawn from shopping activities will be analyzed by the system of percentages. The findings of contrastive study in interpersonal communications drawn by Liao & Bresnahan may be concluded as follows:

Firstly, one common mode of polite refusals in Chinese and perhaps in oriental countries is: Address form (if the refusee is of high status), plus one of the politeness markers of apology followed by the reasons for refusal (address term + apology + reasons), such as “ 老师，不好意思，我今晚要赶篇作文（我明天有个考试，我明晚考完试帮您，怎么样？）。” One mode of polite refusals in American English is: An expression of a positive opinion in a subjective mood such as “ I would like to…” followed by “but” plus reasons for refusal and one of the politeness markers of apology (I would like to + reasons + apology), such as “ I really wish I could but I’ve got other things to do, I’m sorry. ” or “Yes I would love to help, but, sorry, I would have to leave early.” The findings also indicate that significantly more Americans than Chinese prefer a vague or subjective reason although men and women in the two areas are not significantly different in their willingness to offer it.

Secondly, according to the number of the tokens of refusal strategies used by the Chinese, Liao and Bresnahan (1996) propose a politeness refusal hypothesis of “marginally touching the point” because the Chinese are more economical in their choices of the number of the tokens of refusal strategies in order to restore agreeable relationship between people, while the Americans tend to employ different refusal strategies and even do not hesitate to give a peer a lesson if they are right, because they emphasize solving the problems in question. For that, a hypothesis of “question attentiveness” has been proposed by Clark and Schunk (cited from Liao and Bresnahan, 1996:706) in 1980 for the westerners, which says: “ the more attentive a requestee is to all aspects of a requester’s request, the more polite the requestee is.” Of course, to be attentive to one request is, ideally, to comply with it. However, if one cannot comply, he can mitigate the negative consequences by apologies or explanations. For example, the American utterance “ I’m sorry. But today I have other obligations that need to be done. I’m really sorry.” is counted as using three tokens in refusing: 1) saying “I’m sorry”, 2) explanation, and 3) saying “I’m sorry” again. The Chinese utterance of “老师，对不起，我要赶篇作文。” is counted as using two tokens of in refusing: 1) saying “I’m sorry” and 2) explanation or excuse, because the address terms such as “老师”, “Tom” and “Sir” are not counted as strategies ( Liao and Bresnahan, 1996: 712).

Thirdly, the Chinese are less likely to refuse a family member, while the Americans a friend. When the Chinese refuse a member outside the family, they tend to express that there is a compelling extrinsic force directing them towards the action, and they refuse by claiming exterior factors. Besides, the Chinese are collectively oriented, therefore, when they want to refuse, they generally dare not express positive opinions firstly. They are afraid that if they express positive opinions, then they will be forced to comply. The expression of “I’d love to…” is not a formulaic expression in refusal for the Chinese, while the Americans tend to refuse starting with the expression of “I’d love to”. Therefore, only 3.18% of the Chinese under investigation in their study who cannot comply fully utter it in refusal, and a much higher percentage (19.6%) of Americans utter it. By contrast, more Americans refuse by stating their individual principles for their choice of not offering help. The Americans may state their principles as follows: “I’m sorry, but I just have a rule about not lending out my car”, “I’m sorry, I don’t lend out my car” or “Sorry, I don’t want to lend it to anyone”. Moreover, the responses of the Americans and the Chinese indicate that, compared with the Chinese, significantly more Americans are fond of teaching a peer a lesson when they are right. The American methods of teaching a peer a lesson can be exemplified as follows: “Sorry, but you snooze, you loose”, “If you skip class, then you pay the price” or “You should come to class more often. You might learn more if you take your own notes.” The Chinese, in contrast, tend not to do so. If they do, their tones will be softer by saying: “ You shouldn’t have been so” or “Ok, but you must not skip class next time.”

Fourthly, the most direct answer of “No, I can’t” is omitted in their study both in English and in Chinese because they only discuss the relative politeness markers of refusing acts. In fact, this is the typical negative answer to the request of the Japanese and the Chinese. But for the sake of politeness, the Chinese may simply say: “I’m sorry. I don’t have a watch.” instead of “No, I can’t” when they can not tell others the time. The study also displays that women are more sensitive to social status than men in both areas, because women are less likely to reject people of high status. In the meanwhile, American men and women as well as Taiwanese men and women are not significantly different in uttering politeness markers, such as “I’m sorry”, and “excuse me”, when they are unable to fully accept a high-status request.

Lastly, Liao (1994) summarizes 21 refusal strategies usually adopted by Mandarin Chinese: 1) silence, hesitation, lack of enthusiasm; 2) offering an alternative; 3) postponement; 4) putting the blame on a third party or something over which you have no control; 5) avoidance; 6) general acceptance without giving details; 7) divert and distract the addressee; 8) general acceptance with excuse; 9) saying what is offered or requested is inappropriate; 10) direct no; 11) excuse or explanation; 12) complaining or appealing to feelings; 13) rationale; 14) joke; 15) criticism; 16) conditional yes; 17) questioning the justification of the request; 18) threat; 19) statement of principle; 20) saying I’m sorry; 21) code-switching.

Of the above five conclusive points on refusal strategies in interpersonal communications, there seem to be two points worth our further consideration. Firstly, although Liao’s list of so many refusal strategies in Mandarin Chinese for interpersonal communications shows that he has really made comprehensive investigations of Chinese refusal strategies, there are at least two related difficulties with Liao’s list. One is that the Chinese students do not adopt so many strategies but strategies 2), 3), 13), 18) and 23), through the cross linguistic argumentative study of English and Chinese refusal strategies by Yao Jun (2003:12-17), a Chinese scholar. She points out that, at times, the Chinese combine the strategies to make refusals, when considering the degree of politeness and conventional acceptance by the society. The other is that there is no consistent principle of classification in Liao’s list. Maybe, we can classify his list of refusal strategies along the dimension of the perspective operations and distinguish them into speaker-oriented strategies such as 5), 6), 7), 8), 10), 15), 16), 18), 19); hearer-oriented strategies such as 2), 9), 11), 12), 17), 20); speaker and hearer-oriented strategies such as 13), 14) and impersonal strategies such as 1), 3), 4), 21). Of course, such a principle of taxonomy and its classification needs further exploring.

Secondly, the Chinese politeness refusal hypothesis of “marginally touching the point” is not only reflected in the fewer strategies of refusals adopted by the Chinese proposed by Liao & Bresnahan, it might also be reflected in how many discourse turns that the interlocutors would like to exchange. The Chinese, especially women, may have exchanged many other topics before mentioning the pity of having to refuse to do something. This can be shown by example 1.

Example 1:

Mrs. Wang: Hello! Where are you going?

Mrs. Zhang: Hello! I’m going to the department office.

Mrs. Wang: Well, to have a meeting?

Mrs. Zhang: No, to fetch a letter.

Mrs. Wang: Oh, how nice your coat is! Where did you buy it?

Mrs. Zhang: Thanks. My husband went to have a meeting in Shanghai last month and bought it for me. I had thought the colour too bright for me.

Mrs. Wang: No, it is fashionable this year. Oh, I have almost forgotten to tell you the washing-basin you recommended me to buy last time, I’m sorry, my husband had already ordered it somewhere else.

Mrs. Zhang: Eh, it doesn’t matter. I just advertised it for a friend. By the way, have you got the subsidy for extra classes?

Mrs. Wang: Oh, no. If you did not mention it, I would forget it. I’ll fetch it tomorrow. Thanks a lot…

　

From Example 1, it can be seen that Mrs. Zhang and Mrs. Wang have taken five turns of discourse exchange, which involve as many as five topics of where to go, what to do, the dress, the washing-basin and the subsidy, while Mrs. Wang’s awkward topic of refusing to buy the washing-basin that Mrs. Zhang has recommended is only mentioned as a side-sequence. By arranging a discourse unit in such a way, Mrs. Wang has ideally minimized impoliteness that results from refusing to buy the washing-basin through the interlocutors’ social negotiations to minimize the importance of the request. This may be another manifestation of the Chinese refusal hypothesis of “marginally touching the point.”

1.2.3 Contrastive Study of English-Chinese Refusal Strategies by Yao Jun

　

The Chinese scholar, Yao Jun, a postgraduate studying for a doctor degree in Shanghai Foreign Language University, has also carried on a cross-linguistic argumentative study on Chinese and English refusal strategies in interpersonal communications. Her study is mainly to test the applicability of Liao & Bresnahan’s (1996) findings in interpersonal communications, based on the same six scenarios of requests devised by Liao & Bresnahan for university students in the United States and Taiwan. Yao’s data are collected from 125 Chinese students in Fudan University, Shanghai Foreign Language University and Guangdong Jiaying University. Her study (2003:12-17) indicates that one common mode of polite refusals in Chinese is: Address form, plus one of the politeness markets of apology followed by reasons for refusal (address term + apology + reasons), which proves Liao & Bresnahan’s hypothesis of Chinese refusal mode in interpersonal communications.

However, Yao’s study shows that the Chinese have little room to choose refusal strategies from Liao’s list of 21 tokens of strategies for the Chinese in practical interpersonal communications, when considering the elements of politeness and social norms. Because refusing is a potentially face-threatening act to the Chinese, it should be accomplished conventionally to satisfy the refusee’s face together with the face of his group or even his family. Based on this point, Yao points out the inadequacies of some politeness theories and proposes Mao’s “a relative face orientation construct” as a relatively adequate model to analyze the data of her study. Mao’s “a relative face orientation construct” (1994: 451-486) shows: “Chinese face and Japanese face are oriented toward an ideal social identity; such an orientation gives rise to a public image. In contrast, American face is oriented toward an ideal individual autonomy; such an orientation nurtures a public self-image.” So the Americans are freer to choose different strategies to make refusals, and the refusees can accept them reasonably. Yao’s study displays that the Chinese like to employ the strategies of 2) offering an alternative, 3) postponement, 13) excuse or explanation, 18) conditional yes and 23) saying I’m sorry, to make refusals. In addition, the Chinese often combine different strategies to make refusals. For example, a student may refuse her teacher’s request by saying: “李老师，对不起。我今晚要赶一篇作文。我请个同学来帮您，怎么样？” (23 + 13 + 2)

Yao’s study (2003:12-17) seems to have shed a new light on why the Chinese differentiate from the Americans in choosing refusal strategies to soften the hardness of the speech act of refusing by using Mao’s “a relative face orientation construct”. However, this seems inadequate to prove the inadequacies of some politeness theories, as she has stated, because politeness seems to be more of a psychological experience than of a social norm. Under a specific context, whether an utterance is polite and how polite an utterance is should be measured by the size of imposition that the addresser has brought and the degree of tolerance that the addressee tends to put. The relative face orientation construct, in essence, allows for cultural differences without “burying” the concept of face. The two ideals of “public” image and “self” image constitute the essential elements of face—the image that we wish to claim for ourselves in social interactions. They afford us new insights into interpreting our own behaviors and behaviors of the westerners.

1.2.4 Contrastive Study of English-Chinese Refusal Strategies by Wang Aihua

　

Wang Aihua (2001:178-185), a Chinese scholar, has also made investigations of different formulaic expressions in refusal and different strategies employed by the Chinese and the Americans in interpersonal communications. Her findings indicate that the formulaic expression of refusing is usually composed of three parts: the head act, the assisting act and modifiers. Take “ No, Nancy, I’m very busy right now” for example, “No” is the head act, “Nancy, very, right now” are modifiers and the sentence of “I’m very busy right now” works as an assisting act. Of the three parts, the head act or the assisting act can accomplish the function of refusing alone.

Ms. Wang concludes 12 refusal strategies working as the head act. They are listed as follows: 1) grounders (We have a really busy schedule this week), 2) regret (I am sorry I can’t), 3) alternative (You can go to the library, they must have Wuthering Heights), 4) dissuade interlocutor (You’d better give up that crazy plan), 5) ask to be paid (10 dollars an hour), 6) make harm clear (This job may not suit you), 7) guilt trip (Last time I asked to borrow your computer, you refused),8) criticize request or requestor (You are not very responsible), 9) acceptance as a refusal (If I were not going shopping in a moment you could certainly use it), 10) avoidance (I’m going to the dentist’s now), 11) principle (No one is supposed to smoke in the meeting-room), 12) folk wisdom (God helps those who help themselves).

The assisting act is used to soften the “hardness” of refusing by 1) thanking (Thank you for considering me for this position, but…), 2) positive opinion (That’s a good idea, but…), 3) empathy (I know it’s your work time, but…) or 4) pick-up (Money? Well, I am afraid I can’t help you). The modifiers are classified into four types: 1) address terms (title/role), 2) first name (志明), 3) endearment term (兰兰), or 4) title plus surname (Secretary Li). Moreover, Mrs. Wang (2001:178-185) points out that it will be more polite by using the following objective deictic words of “our boss” instead of “I”, “anyone” of “you” and “that” of “this”, so the former utterance of “Our boss can’t do that for anyone” is more polite than the latter “I can’t do this for you”.

The hardness of refusals can also be mitigated by turning to the sentence strategies, such as the passive voice, shift of negative position, double negation, question sentence, emphatic sentence, rhetorical question and changes of verb tenses. For example, we may use “No one is allowed to…”instead of “I can’t allow you…”, “I don’t think I can help…” instead of “ I cannot help you”, or “Not that I dislike your project but that I don’t want to be involved”, instead of “I like… but…”. On the other hand, the hardness of refusal can be softened by means of lexical choices, including the down-graders and the intensifiers. The down-graders can be realized by using the face markers of “please, could”, the understaters of “a little, a bit”, the hedges of “some, something”, the subjectivizers of “I’m afraid, I guess”, the downtoners of “probably, maybe”, the cajolers of “you know/see”, the appealers of “right? What do you think?”, the hesitation markers of “well, uh, um”, and the limiters of “this weekend, by five o’clock”. The intensifiers refer to the adverbs of degree, the commitment indicators and honorific/esteem terms such as “very busy, I am sure, your lovely bird”.

Wang’s study seems to focus on the structural analysis of refusal mode and its discourse realization patterns in terms of words, phrases and sentence patterns in interpersonal communications. However, it seems very difficult to be able to collect so complicated and inclusive language materials because most of the subjects are usually very economical of expressing themselves. Moreover, the universality of these findings needs further exploration in other languages besides English and Chinese.

In conclusion, contrastive study has enjoyed popularity both at home and abroad for over half a century. Only by drawing similarities and differences between things and persons can we learn more about the world, because things and persons do not exist in isolation. Contrastive study can be made either synchronically or diachronically between languages or just within one language. The contrastive study of refusal strategies either between English and Japanese or between English and Chinese in interpersonal communications has been based on the assumption that the oriental culture is different from western culture, therefore the discourse realization patterns of the speech act of refusing between English and Chinese (Japanese) are distinct. However, politeness is what people in both cultures are concerned about. Only the ways in which politeness is manifested are different.

The findings drawn in interpersonal communications by the scholars both at home and abroad have made great contributions to agreeing on the different modes of formulaic expressions of English and Chinese refusals: I would like to + reasons + apology / the address term + apology + reasons, as well as the comprehensive list of refusal strategies employed by the peoples in both countries, but the studies have been limited into the field of interpersonal communications and the subjects chosen for studies are limited to in-school college students. So the hypotheses drawn by the scholars are to be further tested in other registers besides interpersonal communications. The subjects should also be extended to as many varieties as possible with different social and individual characteristics. The following chapter is to make a cross-register study of refusal strategies from interpersonal communications to shopping activities as well as a cross-cultural study between English and Chinese.

Chapter Two: Cross-Cultural-Register Study of Refusal Strategies in Shopping Activities between English and Chinese

　

Registers are language varieties appropriate for use in particular speech situations, which are concerned with the addresser’s and the addressee’s relationships to the discourse field, mode and tenor. For that reason, registers are also known as situational dialects.

As speech situations within a monolingual community vary from one to another, the system of an average speaker’s linguistic repertoire contains not only a set of linguistic variants at the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, but also a set of characteristic speech patterns for the situational use of language. For example, the Chinese speakers use different words for “eat”, depending on the situation. In informal situations such as at home or at a friend’s party, people tend to say “吃”, while in formal situations such as at a marriage ceremony or at a dinner party for foreign guests, people will use “用餐”. Such a situational use of “having a dinner” is a manifestation of such elaborate registers that are adhered to in certain social situations.

Many societies have stricter rules that govern the situational use of language, in which variation in speech register is more formally encoded. In some Indo-European and Oriental languages, for example, there is a distinction in the choice of a second person singular pronoun “you” between the familiar form and the polite form, depending on the amount of respect or deference one wishes to show. The informal French “tu” and Chinese “你” are reserved for intimates or juniors, and the more formal “vous” and “您” are used with non-intimates or seniors. Similarly, both in Chinese and in English we have conventionally polite discourse for the line of service. For example, in English, we may say: “What can I do for you? / No, thanks”; in Chinese, we may say: “您要点什么? / 噢，我先看看。” The discourse for the courtroom occasion should be more formal and solemn. For example, we may say: “be seated” instead of “sit down”, “your honor” instead of “you”.

This distinction is also shown in the discourse such as the speech act of refusing. The register of interpersonal communications is different from that of shopping activities. As the Chinese saying goes, “business is business.” Although Brown and Levinson (1987) assume that, with a few exceptions, social situations are cooperative, and it is in everyone’s interest to support each other’s face. By contrast, we agree to the proposal given by Craig, Tracy, and Spisak (cited from Liao and Bresnahan, 1996:713) that social situations involve some degree of tension between cooperation and antagonism. Few relationships are completely cooperative, yet even the most cooperative act may have hostile undertones, because speakers are concerned not only about others’ faces, but also about their own. Since one way of protecting others’ faces is to risk degrading your own, messages are often a complicated tangle of supports and attacks. Discourse for shopping activities reflects not only the faces of the interlocutors but more of the interests of each other, so it seems to be more antagonistic than cooperative. This point may be illustrated by example 2.

Example 2:

Customer: Excuse me, how much is this bag?

Attendant: At least 100 yuan. It’s made of bull further and produced in Shanghai.

Customer:100 yuan? I saw a bag of the same style a few days ago in Women’s Street, but the price is only 50 yuan. You have charged too much.

Attendant: You can have a thorough look at it and you will find it is totally different.

Customer: But the price is too high. How about 40 yuan?

Attendant: 40 yuan? You can have a look somewhere else (she is putting away the bag angrily).

Customer: Em, what about 45 yuan? I have not brought so much money. Next time, I will advise my classmates to come here to buy your bags.

Attendant: Er…All right, I sold it to you without making any profits. I really hope you and your friends to come to me for next deals…

We may feel more antagonistic than cooperative undertones in Example 2 when the speech event involves the interests of the interlocutors. Since the speech act of price bargaining means making a profit or losing money for the attendant in the business deal, the attendant has chosen to change her attitudes from friendliness to coldness, even to anger, while the customer would rather sacrifice her “face” by firstly complaining about the high price, and then insisting that the attendant sell the bag to her, although she has not enough money on her. So in a business deal, people seem to be more antagonistic than cooperative to maintain their own interests, although they are essentially willing to be socially negotiated to accomplish goods-money exchanges. Accordingly, it is hypothesized that the discourse realization patterns for refusing in shopping activities may not be so polite as those used in interpersonal communications. The Chinese and English modes of the formulaic expressions in refusing and the applied refusal strategies in shopping activities might be different from those in interpersonal communications, as well.

2.2 Theoretical Consideration of Methodology of Contrastive Study

　

Methodology is one of the most basic questions for any discipline dealing with human interactions. However, there are serious questions as to the best methods of gathering and analyzing the very data upon which the descriptions must rest. There is no exception to contrastive study. The questions of what constitutes data and how we treat data are fundamental to the entire project of explaining and describing the comparative researches, both from linguistic and socio-linguistic viewpoints. No matter what else we do, we must remember that if data are inadequate, there is always the danger that the theory and the conclusions drawn from them are unreliable and misleading.

The approaches toward the gathering of data for linguistic analysis are roughly of two types: observation and elicitation. Under the first category of observation, we have a non-participant-involved observation, which has its origin in anthropology. Anthropologists try to collect data in this way to describe speech behaviors of groups excluding themselves. However, ethnologists are not limited to the study of groups excluding themselves. Nowadays, both anthropologists and socio-linguists have increasingly been investigating speech behaviors of groups with themselves as members. This focus gives participant observation new meanings, since the researcher is often not distinguishable from the group being studied and can observe everyday behaviors without causing self-consciousness on the part of those being observed.

The second category of elicitation may include all techniques in which subjects are aware that what they say is being studied by an investigator. This category includes the techniques of eliciting linguistic data from a single subject during many months or even years of work sessions, and the techniques of eliciting data from numerous subjects in single interviews. Socio-linguistic data can be elicited through the use of carefully designed questionnaires, both spoken and written, or through the use of role-plays.

Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, and the collection of data from everyday interaction is no exception. The great disadvantages of collecting natural data are that examples of a particular feature of speech behavior may occur so rarely or so unpredictably that large samples are difficult to acquire. Even if a large body of data is collected and analyzed, there is really no way to be certain about how universal the findings are. Human behaviors are not neat, and the factors that condition the patterns of everyday interactions are complex and dynamic. Unless one is observed without intervening, then there is no real way of controlling one variable or another. In addition, too often, there is a tendency to forget the context in which speech is produced and to neglect the collection of the data for studies from different speech events. One of the most important insights of socio-linguistics is that people speak very differently in different situations. So when we devise questionnaires, we must firstly know under what context the utterance takes place.

There are two approaches to analyzing the collected data: quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. Quantitative analysis is generally a deductive study, applying the general theory to the special situations to test the reliability of an assumption. It is usually based on a theoretical assumption, and goes on with the data collection and analysis so as to examine the assumption. Of course, not all quantitative studies go on with a definite assumption but all of them always imply an assumption. Quantitative analysis is usually based on a strict logical argumentation. It is due to the study of an individual variety or element through a large number of statistics, comparisons and analyses, so as to make argumentative explanations of language phenomena. From the perspective of etymology, the qualitative study is naturalistically based. It expounds the performances of researches in a concrete and natural situation, in an attempt to interpret the natural situations,on the whole, therefore, the results of the researches might be more reliable. Qualitative analysis is generally an inductive study, which draws conclusions on the research of the specific conditions. As a result, the theory assumption may not be established beforehand. It can be set up during or after the research. Nowadays, most of the contrastive studies of the speech act realization patterns such as requests, complaints, apologies, suggestions and refusals, are carried on by means of quantitative study, which starts with a contrastive analysis of a hypothesis and ends with the testing of the hypothesis in another language.

Different methods for data collection and analysis in the same study can be used for different purposes. Some methods can be employed to collect the primary data; other methods have the subsidiary functions of developing the instrument for the primary data. Alternatively, two or more data types may have equivalent status in the study, yielding complementary information on the research questions at hand. It is the same with the methods for data analysis. So researchers may well combine different methods to collect and analyze data to make their study more reliable and credible.

The necessary number of subjects chosen for studies, suggested by Kasper, G. & Dahl, M. (1991:215-245), depends both on the variables under study, and on the number of coding categories. The huge numbers of subjects in the cross-cultural study data appear somewhat excessive in view of the fact that the samples are homogeneous in terms of social stratum, so groups are still large enough when samples are subdivided according to sex. Therefore, it is justified in suggesting that for most purposes in research on contrastive study of speech act realization, discourse completion questionnaires within 20 items and 30 subjects per undivided sample should serve as a rough guide for decisions on these issues.

The project of this contrastive study of refusal strategies in shopping activities has been carried on through joint work with another collaborator studying for a doctor degree in Shanghai Foreign Language University. The study focuses on discourse realization patterns for the speech act of refusing in shopping activities in American English and Mandarin Chinese. The goals of the study are:

1 To establish similarities and differences in relation to native speakers’ realization patterns of refusing in shopping activities in different situational varieties, such as department stores, street stands and self-service super-markets (situational variability).

2 To establish similarities and differences between Chinese and English realization patterns of refusing in relation to the same situational varieties but different individuals (individual variability).

3 To establish similarities and differences in the cross-register realization patterns of refusing in relation to the same situational and individual constraints but across registers (register variability).

　

In order to achieve the above-mentioned goals, we need an empirical design that would allow us to account for situational variability, individual variability and register variability in the discourse realization patterns of refusing by employing the quantitative study. In order to ensure reliability and credibility of this study, it is decided that the data be obtained by combining elicitation with a discourse description test and a multiple prescriptive test, and a direct observation of mainly children subjects and super-market shoppers. As the shopping discourse happens between customers and attendants, so the social distance between the interlocutors and their social status relative to each other is fixed. The physical contexts of shopping, shoppers’ individual variability and their preferable refusal strategies are considered to be variables.

Altogether 120 valid papers are collected from the Chinese subjects aged from 20 to 50 from different lines. Moreover, 30 primary students aged from 10 to 13 and 30 retired people over 60 years old are chosen as subjects to be interviewed on the refusal strategies in shopping activities. 50% of the subjects are male and 50% female. 120 valid papers are also collected from the American subjects aged from 20 to 50. All of them are staying in the city of Hefei or Shanghai as teachers, businessmen or students, so their discourse realization patterns of refusing may have been culturally assimilated by the Chinese more or less. But when they are elicited to answer the questions as English subjects, they express the opinion that there should be no worries about it.

In order to acquire relatively reliable and enough data for contrastive analysis of refusal strategies in shopping activities, both descriptive and prescriptive questionnaires are devised for the subjects from China and America to fill in.

For Item 1 (written in both Chinese and English), subjects are asked to answer seven questions in the given contexts, after supplying their personal background information.

Part one: Before you answer the seven questions, please supply the following information.

　

Part two: Questions

When you do shopping in a department store, how do you usually begin and end communications with attendants? A: In a polite way usually with “please” and “thanks”. B: In a casual way without “please” or “thanks”. Please describe it.

In a department store, if you do not want to buy anything, how do you refuse the offers? A: After a few turns of discourse. B: Immediately after the attendant’s request. Why?

Do you give any reasons for your refusals? What kind of reasons would you like to give? A: Subjective reasons B: Objective reasons. Please list some reasons.

4. Under what conditions do you only say “No” or do you just shake your head without any exchange with attendants? Have you ever made refusals like that?

A: Yes. B: No.

If you face a peddler at a street stand, are there any differences in your refusal strategies? A: Yes. With reasons offered occasionally. B: No.

In your opinion, are there any differences in adopting strategies of refusals in relation to different genders, ages, social classes and education levels? A: Yes. B: No.

If you do shopping in a self-service supermarket, do you always buy something? A: Yes. B: No. What do you think are the reasons for it? Of the two reasons of absence of attendants’ imposition and the super-market shopping environment, which one has more effect on it? Please list your reasons in order of importance.

　

　

		Americans			Chinese
Qs		Males	Females	Total	Males	Females	Total
A	60(100%)	60(100%)	120（100％）	52（86％）	56（93％）	108（90％）
B	0	0	0	8（14％）	4（7％）	12（10％）
A	50（83％）	54（90％）	104（87％）	48（80％）	50（83％）	98（82％）
B	10（17％）	6（10％）	16（13％）	12（20％）	10（17％）	22（18％）
A	52（87％）	50（83％）	102（85％）	20（33％）	15（27％）	35（21％）
B	8（13％）	10（17％）	18（15％）	40（67％）	45（73％）	85（79％）
A	8（13％）	10（15％）	18（15％）	40（67％）	56（93％）	96（80％）
B	52（87％）	50（85％）	102（85％）	20（33％）	4（7％）	24（20％）
A	42（70％）	54（90％）	96（80％）	48（80％）	56（93％）	104（87％）
B	18（30％）	6（10％）	24（20％）	12（20％）	4（7％）	16（13％）
A	20（33％）	21（35％）	41（36％）	40（67％）	50（83％）	90（75％）
B	40（67％）	39（65％）	79（64％）	20（33％）	10（17％）	30（25％）
A	57（95％）	52（87％）	109（91％）	55（92％）	54（90％）	109（91％）
B	3（5％）	8（13％）	11（9％）	5（8％）	6（10％）	11（9％）

A cross-linguistic comparison of the answers given to Q1 provided by the Chinese and the Americans will tell us whether and how much the people tend to abide by the Principle of Politeness when they do everyday shopping exchanges. Answers to Q2, Q5 and Q7 are expected to capture possible refusing variables concerning situational varieties such as a department store, a street stand and a self-service supermarket. Answers to Q3, Q4 and Q6 aim at capturing individual variables in adopting refusal strategies along personal variables such as age, sex, level of education and different types of occupation in each language.

30 Grade-3 students (15 boys and 15 girls) studying for a double-bachelor degree in English department in Anhui University are chosen as pilot testers to check the applicability of Item 1. The following four prescriptive multiple choices in Item 2 are also constructed on the materials collected from Item 1. This pilot test is carried on in autumn in 2003.

Four prescriptive multiple-choices in Item 2 are listed from the most polite item to the least polite one. They have been devised based on the materials collected from the descriptive discourses of Item1. Shopping activities usually go on either at a street stand with a variety of fruits or other small articles, such as the first part in Item 2 or in a department store with ample food and clothing such as the second part in Item 2. The third part in Item 2 is about American customers shopping in a foreign hotel. The statistics concluded from Item 2 indicates that both the Chinese and the Americans tend to make refusals to attendants’ requests in a polite way by using different refusal strategies, despite the differences in choosing reasons for refusals.

The following analysis has been built upon materials drawn by means of elicitation with Item 1 and Item 2 as well as of interviews mainly of children subjects and observation of shoppers in self-service supermarkets. Both the Chinese and the Americans try to abide by the Co-operative Principle and the Politeness Principle, but they differ in discourse realization patterns for refusals in terms of word use and syntactic structure due to different social cultures and language features.

Of all the shopping exchanges under observation, whether they go on at a street stand or in a department store, both the Chinese and the Americans are more likely to refuse the attendants’ offers. Of all the 30 customers, 21 shoppers refuse to buy things, which amounts to 70 percent, although the attendants serving in city department stores are more cautious of greeting customers with more formal and deferent utterances such as “先生、小姐，您要点什么？” in Chinese or “what can I do for you, Madam?” in English. The chance of being refused is still higher than that in the countryside markets, which seems to disobey the conventionally acknowledged norm of “The more polite the request is, the less room there is for rejection”.

As for the reasons, there seem to be two points to make: firstly, although attendants try to be as polite as possible by employing deferent address terms such as “Mr.” or “Madam” and interrogative sentence patterns to show their warmth and sincerity, which, to a certain degree, help to fuss the illocutionary force of “making profits by accomplishing goods-money exchange”, the specific shopping contexts make the customers aware of the function of the speech act of requests, therefore, the rate of refusals is still higher; secondly, from the perspectives of “cost” and “benefit” which the discourse involves, the surface structure of the requests indicates that the attendants are on the “cost” side, while the customers are on the “benefit” side. In English, the attendant offers service by saying “I” do for “you”, but the deep meaning under the surface structure is to “induce” the customers to accept their suggestions and buy the goods following their directions. Therefore, in effect, customers are virtually on the “cost” side, not only obeying their directions but also paying the money so that the attendants might make profits. So the dynamic change of the roles of the attendants and the customers can be seen from the whole course of the speech exchanges, with the former standing firstly on the “cost” side but ending on the “benefit” side, while the latter is reversed.

When it comes to the rate of refusals in the self-service supermarkets, it is generally known that the customers are usually able to choose their goods by themselves while the attendants are often absent, which seems the least polite because of the absence of the speech act of requests. However, of 30 customers under observation, about 90% of them end in buying what they have planned to buy. Answers to Q7 in Item 1 also prove this point because as high as 91% of the Americans and 91% of the Chinese say that they are more likely to buy what they need in self-service supermarkets because they feel more autonomous and pleased by checking the quality and price of the goods by themselves, therefore, the psychological experience of being on the “cost” side has greatly been compensated for.

So the norm of request-refusal in the shopping activities seems to be different from that in interpersonal communications. The norm of “the more polite the requests are, the less room there is for rejection” in personal communications does not seem to fit the register of the shopping activities, where people are more likely to refuse the attendants’ service although the attendants are as polite as possible, while in self-service supermarkets, even when the attendants’ requests are absent, people are still more likely to buy goods.

The Co-operative Principle of conversation is to regulate what the interlocutors intend to say during conversations and how to interpret utterances provided that the interlocutors are co-operative. This principle has been tested in the speech act of shopping activities, because, after the speakers make a greeting, the listeners will usually take the next turn of speech by exchanging something, with few people only keeping silent or only shaking their heads. The number concluded in Item 2 shows that only 9% of the Chinese shopping in city department stores and 19% of them shopping in the countryside markets keep silent or only shake heads while almost no Americans do so, because such responses not only show rudeness but also violate the Co-operative Principle, which will lead to the breakdown of normal social communications. Therefore, although the customers tend to make refusals, they prefer to adopt some refusal strategies to “soften” this potentially face-threatening act so as to keep a friendly business relationship between dealers. Moreover, from the sociological point of view, to repair others’ faces means to earn their own faces, because people live in relation with others and rudeness not only shows your ignobleness but also invites the risk of losing your own face because the addressees can also refute your coldness.

However, answers to Q4 in Item 1 indicate that 80% of the Chinese would like to make refusals in the most impolite way such as “only say no” or “only shake heads” under such situations: firstly, when the attendant’s attitude is very cold, responding to the customers in a disdainful manner; secondly, when people are hurrying for time or in bad moods or bad-tempered by nature when the peddlers are too pushy; thirdly when the goods are fake goods and the prices are too high. In contrast, only 15% of the Americans would like to make refusals in this most impolite way if they feel that someone is being too pushy. One of the interesting reasons from the collected data is that sometimes the Americans have to say “no” only or shake their heads in China because they can not speak Chinese very well. At home, they try not to say “no” only, nor do they just shake their heads unless the salesperson is being too aggressive.

Cross-registerally, the chance of using this most impolite refusal strategy in shopping activities is, in fact, seldom seen in interpersonal communications. This may result from different roles that the interlocutors act. In shopping activities, the attendants represent not only themselves but also mostly the companies, so their “ public face” is divided into half his own and half the company’s. The same is true of the loss of face. In inter-personal communications, earning face or losing face is of completely one’s own business, so people are willing to waste more time and efforts to make refusals with as many strategies as possible; Cross-culturally, considerably more Chinese than Americans (80%-15%) would like to make refusals by saying “no” only or “shaking their heads”, due to the different social values of interpreting individual existence. Americans believe that all people are born equal despite the division of social work, while the Chinese are more likely to evaluate people according to their work, and usually, to the Chinese, it is considered to be an attendant’s duty or obligation to offer customers services.

In order to maintain the Politeness Principle, both the Chinese and the Americans tend to use the following two strategies: the strategy of insertion sequences between adjacency pairs and the strategy of using preface words or hesitation fillers.

Adjacency pair is the basic unit of conversation activities. When A addresses the first part of the pair such as “question” or a “request” to B, then B usually will perform the second part such as an “answer” or a “refusal” or “receiving” as the adjacency pair A has stated. In so doing, B not only performs the right responses to A, but thereby, displays his understanding of the first parts, which is in accordance with the Co-operative Principle put forward by Paul Grice (1975): “Make your conversational contribution such as required, at the sage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.” However, in fact, the discourse in natural situations is not always composed of “adjacency pairs”, but embedded by one or even more “insertion sequences” (Schegloff : 1972) for the effects of emphasis, surprise, politeness or even because of misunderstanding. Here is the example 3 of insertion sequences to arrive at politeness.

Example 3:

Attendant: What can I do for you, Madam? (Q1) 售货员：大姐,你要点什么水果？

Customer: Can I try on this sandal, please? (Q2) 顾客：你这 “红富士”苹果多少钱一斤？

Attendant: Of course, please. (A2) 售货员：五快一斤。正宗牌子。

Customer: Oh, that’s nice, but I’m afraid the colour 顾客：五元一斤？有 “金帅” 吗？

is too bright for me. (A3) 售货员：噢，对不起，现在没有。买点

Attendant: Would you try another one? (Q3) “红富士”，挺好吃的。

Customer: Eh… no, thanks. (A1) 顾客：不用了，我再看看别的地方。

　

The above two discourses in Example 3 shows that both the Chinese and the Americans are willing to insert Q2-A2, Q3-A3 before they make refusals of Q1-A1. By using these two insertion sequences, together with the side sequence of repetition of the apple price in the Chinese discourse, the interlocutors manage to soften the “hardness” of the speech act of refusing. Of course, such effect can be arrived at only on the basis of social negotiation to be co-operative. Accordingly, the attendants might feel less hurt or offended, because the customers are regarded to be so considerate for giving the refusees enough time to be psychologically prepared to accept the refusals as well as showing their pity to have to do so.

According to Schegloff’s principle of “Conditional Relevance”(1972), the phenomenon may also be interpreted like this: The customers are, in fact, psychologically well prepared to be “accepted” or “rejected” because both of them are considered as relevant second parts of a request. Unless the responses are totally absent or the information of the responses is not so enough as is desired, the customers will therefore feel hurt or offended. Of course, such an agreeable shopping activity can happen only when the interlocutors are not so hurried and they are in good moods.

2.6.1.2.2 The Strategy of Using Preface Words or Hesitation Fillers

Example 3 also displays that both the Chinese and the Americans show their consideration in making refusals by using preface words or hesitation words, such as “well” “oh”, “eh” in English and “噢”, “哎” in Chinese. In addition, from observation, some elderly Chinese people are sometimes heard to refuse the familiar sellers by saying “噢，你这个是不错。不过我昨天刚买过。下次一定来买你的。” Here, the customer sacrifices the maxim of quality by giving an invalid promise so as to abide by the Politeness Principle, because he refuses not only by giving an explanation but also telling a white lie, a lie not for his own interests but for others’. In fact, people do not care about what he has said but whether he has said something.

The unit of analysis for refusals in speech events should be the utterance or sequence of utterances supplied by the subjects completing the test items, provided that it realizes or contains a realization of the speech act of refusing under study. Then, the first problem in looking at the sequence is in deciding whether all of the parts are of equal importance or serve equal functions in realizing the speech act of refusing. The study shows that the mode of refusals in shopping activities is also composed of three parts but of different elements compared with the mode for interpersonal communications. Answers to Q1 in Item 1 indicate that most of the Chinese would like to begin their refusals with preface words such as “噢”, “哎” followed by “phony approval” or “ thanks” and “reasons” (preface words + phony approval/thanks + reasons), to refuse the attendants. For example, people may say： “噢，是不错（谢谢）,不过我想再看看。”，which is different from the mode used in interpersonal communications: address term + apology + reasons. The Americans, however, often use such a mode as: preface words / no+ thanks+ reasons, which is obviously different from the mode: I would like to + reasons + apology in interpersonal communications.

If some cross–cultural comparisons are made, it can be seen that the head act of refusals by saying “no” is seldom present in Chinese. The Chinese tend to express phony approval on others’ opinions or even to think highly of the goods before they give reasons for refusals. The Americans, however, tend to perform the head act of refusals by saying “no”, followed by “thanks”. Moreover, not all the Chinese would say “thanks” when they make refusals while almost all the Americans would say “thanks” after they express refusals. There seem to be two reasons for it: one is that the American attendants always start with “I” doing for “you”; the other is that the Americans usually refuse by directly saying “no” to the attendants. The Chinese, however, seldom directly say “no” to the attendants and the attendants usually greet the customers by saying “what do ‘you’ need?” which starts the action with “you”. Cross-registerally, both the Chinese and English modes used in shopping activities are considerably different from those employed in interpersonal communications. On the whole, the modes used in interpersonal communications seem to be more indirect, thereby more polite, because both the Chinese and the Americans seldom say “no” or just shake heads. In addition, both of them prefer “marked” discourses of refusals, which seem to be longer than the “unmarked” ones.

The third element of the refusal modes both in Chinese and English, which gives reasons for refusals, includes reference to the attendants, the customers or the goods on sale. The refuser might choose different ways to refer to one or two of these three factors, manipulated by his or her different perspectives he or she wishes the refusal to take. For example, the differences between “The price for the this kind of apples is too high”, “ I’m afraid this kind of cosmetics does not suit me” and “This bottle of medicine has not been posted with the date of production” are that the first utterance is to emphasize the role of the attendant in the speech act of refusing, because it is the attendant who charges too high a price; the second stresses that of the customer, and the third focuses on that of the goods. The statistics drawn from answers to Q3 in Item 1 shows that considerably more Americans (85%) would like to give subjective reasons such as customer-oriented reasons, while the Chinese (79%) are more likely to give objective reasons such as goods-oriented reasons or other objective reasons. This difference further shows that the Americans value individual feelings more while the Chinese are not so likely to express individual attitudes. According to different perspective operations, refusal reasons adopted by the customers may be classified into the following three categories:

A: Customer-oriented: I don’t like this style; I’m afraid the colour is too bright for me; I usually don’t change the brand I’m accustomed to; I want to look more; etc.

B: Attendant-oriented, or other objective reasons: He / She has charged too much; he / she has played a trick on the steelyard; the money brought along is not enough; the goods has been bought; there is no need of the goods at home now; etc.

C: Goods-oriented: The colour of the goods does not stand wear and tear; the style is out of fashion; the medicine has not been posted with the date of production; the size of the shoes does not suit me; etc.

　

Liao (1994) has concluded 21 refusal strategies for interpersonal communications, however, the study displays that both the Chinese and the Americans are economical in their choices of the tokens of the refusal strategies in shopping activities. The Americans are more willing to employ subjective reasons which are customer-oriented, while the Chinese the objective reasons which are goods-oriented or attendant-oriented. Both the Chinese and the Americans seem to be less effortful in choosing as many polite strategies as possible because they think it is reasonable to refuse to buy the goods that they do not like or the goods that are of bad quality. So the specific register of shopping communications makes it appropriate and acceptable for both the Chinese and the Americans to make refusals in a more direct way.

Answers to Q6 “Are there any differences in the strategies of refusal in relation to sex, age, social status and education level?” in Item 1 show that 64% of the Americans do not think there is any difference in the strategies of refusal in relation to individual variability, but they do not deny possible differences in other countries, because, in general, the Americans do not like to feel so much pressure out of individual variability, which may make them very nervous in public. However, 40% of the Americans think that differences in social status do occur because perhaps the types of stores where they are shopping require different levels of politeness.

By contrast, about 75% of the Chinese think there are differences in refusal strategies in relation to sex, age, social status and education level. Of all the 30 children chosen as subjects aged from 10-13 studying in Grade Six in the Primary School in Anhui University, 25 children (83%) believe that they are less likely to refuse to buy some articles if they have money with them; of all the 30 elderly people over 60 years old living in Anhui University, 93% of them are very cautious in checking the quality and the price of the goods before they buy something. When they refuse to buy something, they are more direct to give some customer-oriented or goods-oriented reasons. 11 subjects (37%) would like to teach the peddlers a lesson, such as “It’s too dirty, you only care for making money” or “continuously shake their heads, or just gaze for a few minutes, and then turn away without reasons”. Of all the 120 Chinese subjects, 53% of them think that women are more critical of the goods before they buy something and 23% of them (these two numbers are not shown in Item 1) think that education level will affect the choice of refusal strategies, but they do not think that the people with a higher education level will be necessarily more polite in making refusals. What kind of strategies that the people tend to adopt seems to be more connected with one’s characteristics than with one’s level of education.

Answers to Q5 in Item 1 display that most of the Americans (80%) and the Chinese (87%) think that there are differences in refusing the peddlers and that they will be more direct in making refusals to peddlers by offering reasons occasionally or pretending not to see peddlers so that the peddlers do not get excited. If they want something from a peddler, they will usually try to bargain. If they do not want anything, they say “no” or “shake their heads” and walk away.

Cross-registerally, in the register study of interpersonal communications, the subjects chosen for investigation (liao & Bresnahan 1994, Yao Jun 2003, Wang Aihua 2004) are all college students with almost the same age, social status and education level, so no findings involved with these elements have been made. It may be worth further researches on this point.

In sum, seven scenarios in Item 1 are devised for 120 Chinese and 120 Americans to describe how people would like to make refusals in shopping activities, together with some statistic analyses of Item 1 and Item 2. The findings are concluded as follows: Both the Chinese and the Americans are usually willing to maintain Co-operative Principle and Politeness Principle by using such refusal strategies as insertion sequences, preface words or hesitation fillers. However, both the Chinese and the Americans are more economical of and direct in offering reasons for refusals in shopping activities than in interpersonal communications; The Chinese tend to use the refusal mode of “preface words + phony approval + reasons” in shopping activities, different from the mode of “address term + apology + reasons” in interpersonal communications, while the Americans would like to use the mode of “preface words / no + thanks + reasons” in shopping activities, different from the mode of ‘‘I would like to + reasons + apology” in interpersonal communications. Both the Chinese and the Americans think that different shopping contexts will definitely affect the rate of refusal and the degree of politeness. Both the peoples are less likely to refuse to buy things in self-service supermarkets for they feel more autonomous and safer by checking articles by themselves. However, Most of the Chinese think that there are differences in refusal strategies in relation to sex, age, social status and education level in shopping activities, while most of the Americans do not think so, though they do not deny the possible differences in other countries.

In order to have anything to talk about, we have to perceive certain “realities”, which means that we become conscious of the world around us, whether through visual perception, auditory perception, olfactory perception or otherwise. Moreover, we have to make sense of these perceptions, in other words, we have to make what we have perceived interpretable and usable by certain means to serve our intended purposes. As Gamble states (cited from Samovar, 2000:56), “perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensory data in a way that enables us to make sense of our world.” Since perception is primary for us to acquire information and knowledge about our external physical and social world, it is essential in the study of intercultural communications.

When a mother feeds a child younger than one year old with more food but he has felt full or bored, he may “cry” to show refusals. Of course, in certain situations, a baby’s crying can also mean that he asks for some food. So when people are very young, they may turn to “cries” to show refusals. When young, they do not seem to refuse with whatever strategies that are concerned with politeness. 30 nursery children aged from 3 to 5 are chosen as subjects by us to be interviewed. They are asked why they should say “噢，对不起”, when they refuse somebody or refuse to do something. 17% of the children say that they do not know why; 78% of the children say it is the teacher or mother or father who has taught them to say so because good children should be polite; 5% of the children say that they get the knowledge from reading materials. Then, as children grow up, they will participate in more social activities and seem to have become more aware of the Principle of Politeness. Sometimes they even take an advantage of being rude to others to show their determination to refuse to do something or to break communications with others. This can be seen from example 4.

Example 4:

Student A: May I borrow your bike for a while?

Student B: No!

Student A: Why?

Student B: No reason!

　

This dialogue in Example 4 clearly shows that Student B is well aware of impoliteness of his speech and just takes an advantage of it to show his determination to make refusals and even to break further communications with Student B. Maybe, this is because Student B often borrows things from him but cannot return the things as soon as possible or often does some damage to the borrowed things.

The study on refusal strategies in personal communications shows that the Chinese tend to use the refusal mode of “ address term + apology + reasons”, while the Americans the mode of “ I would like to + reasons + apology”. In shopping activities, the Chinese tend to use the mode of “preface words + phony approval + reasons”, different from the mode of “preface words / no + thanks + reasons” used by the Americans. These findings seem to show that an utterer can produce refusals with different sentence structures. Besides, in fact, people can make refusals in different tones if the tones are appropriate to specific contexts as well as helpful to realize the speaker’s intended meanings. This can be seen from example 5.

Example 5:

Mother: Xiaoting, hurry for your homework, please!

Daughter: 1. I am drinking some water, Mum.

2. Come over to have a look! Mum. I have finished it at school.

3. I have a headache, Mum.

4. What day is it, today, Mum? Friday! Friday…

In Example 5, the mother tries to urge her daughter to finish her homework, but the daughter refuses the mother in different tones in addition to the use of different sentence structures. Utterance 1 is to blame the mother for her neglecting her daughter’s habit of drinking some water before doing homework; utterance 2 to show the daughter’s excitement for her having finished the homework beforehand; utterance 3 to show her unwillingness to start the homework now, and utterance 4 to remind the mother of the principle: The girl is free from any homework on Friday evening.

So in attempting to express ourselves, we do produce utterances composed of lexical words, sentence patterns and different tones. In the meanwhile, people perform actions through these utterances. Actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts. It is the same with the speech act of refusing. In Example 5, the daughter performs the act of “refusing” through four or even more utterances. However, these utterances are only expected to convey the speaker’s intended meaning—refusing the mother’s request. Whether the intended meaning can be realized or to what degree it can be realized depends on the circumstances surrounding the utterance, including other utterances, which are called the speech events. In many ways, it is the nature of the speech events that determines the interpretation of an utterance as performing a particular speech act. In Example 5, the speech event happens between the mother and the daughter, who have much mutual knowledge of each other’s behavioral rules, so the daughter’s utterances can be easily interpreted as refusals to the mother.

On the other hand, according to the theory of speech acts, on any occasion, the act performed by producing an utterance consists of three related acts: locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. Of the three acts, illocutionary act interests linguistic scholars most. Illocutionary act is what is done in saying something. The daughter, in Example 5, is “refusing” the mother in making those utterances, while the intended meaning is conveyed indirectly.

John Searle (1979) describes his speech act formula as F(P), where “F” stands for illocutionary force, the act side of every speech act, and “p” for proposition, the content side of every speech act, which is made up of a reference and a predication. For example, we may segment the utterance “I beg you to consider the decision once again before you leave” into the speech act formula of F (beg) + P (you consider the decision once again before you leave). Of course, many utterances can also accomplish the illocutionary acts without explicit performative verbs such as the mother’s utterance of asking the daughter to hurry for her homework. The former type of utterances with performative verbs is usually called explicit performatives, while the latter is called implicit performatives. So, usually, we say: “ I ask (invite, promise, beg, hate…) you to come”, but we do not say: “ I refuse you to come” or “I refuse you by doing …”. This linguistic phenomenon seems to show that the act of refusing can only be implied in the course of dynamic interactions of the interlocutors.

Moreover, refusal can be produced by other means as well besides “saying”. In many circumstances where utterances are not effective to convey the intended meaning of refusing, we employ some symbols or signs to serve us. For example, we use the red traffic light or red flags to stop the mobiles by making traffic regulations; examinees are directed to stop writing the papers by listening to electric bells. The studies on refusal strategies both in personal communications and shopping activities display that, sometimes, we refuse others only by shaking the head, pretending not to hear anything or even making a face. So saying is refusing, but refusing can be done without saying, as well.

In brief, an utterer can produce refusals in different tones besides the use of different sentence structures if the tones are appropriate to the specific speech events. Illocutionary acts can usually be accomplished by either explicit performatives with performative verbs or implicit performatives without performative verbs. However, we usually do not make refusals by explicit performatives such as “I refuse you to do…” or “I refuse you by doing …” Moreover, saying is refusing, but refusing can also be done without saying.

The studies on refusal strategies both in interpersonal communications and shopping activities display that an expression of a dispreferred second part such as “refusing” both in English and in Chinese can usually be accomplished without actually saying “no”, especially in interpersonal communication, but with some hinting words or expressions such as preface words and hesitation fillers. George Yule (1996:81) has also concluded a series of optional elements presented in the sentence patterns associated with a dispreferred second part in English as follows:

How to do a dispreferred Examples

a. delay/hesitate pause; er; em; eh

b. preface well; oh

c. token yes that’s great; I’d love to

d.express doubt I’m not sure; I don’t know

e. apology I’m sorry; what a pity

f. mention obligation I must do x; I’m expected in y

g. appeal for understanding you see; you know

h. make it non-personal everybody else; out there

i. give an account too much work; no time left

j. use mitigators really; mostly; sort of;

k. hedge the negative I guess not; not possible

(George Yule, 1996:81)

Since “refusing” is generally considered to be a dispreferred second part, people may easily interpret the intended meaning of refusing firstly through these hinting words presented by different lexical or sentential choices. This can be illustrated in example 6.

Example 6:

Mr. Wan: Come over for dinner this evening. I have invited some friends at home.

Mr. Hu: Well-em-I’d love to-but you know-I-I’m supposed to turn up at the Lis’ evening party.

　

As can be seen from Example 6, the expression of Mr. Hu’s refusing Mr. Wan’s invitation to dinner is accomplished without actually saying “no”, but with some hinting words. After a preface (“well”) and a hesitation (“em”), Mr. Hu in Example 6 produces a kind of token acceptance (I’d love to) to show appreciation of the invitation. Then Mr. Wan’s understanding is appealed for (“you know”) and an account is presented (“I’m supposed to turn up at the Lis’ evening party”) to explain what prevents Mr. Hu from accepting the invitation, There is also a meaning conveyed here that Mr. Hu’s circumstances are beyond his control because of an obligation (“I’m supposed to”). So, generally speaking, interpreters can manage to get the intended meaning of refusing through these marked symbols.

As children, most of us may ask our parents, “What does this word mean?” This question reflects how we view language. It suggests that we tend to look for meaning in words themselves, but we are wrong if we think that words possess meanings themselves. It is more accurate that people living in certain cultures possess meaning and that words elicit these meanings within those cultures, because culture teaches not only the rules for using linguistic symbols, but more important, the meanings associated with the symbols. Further, culture influences the way people use language. For example: In China, passengers are expected to walk on the right side while in the United States, passengers on the left. So meaning, in essence, shifts from culture to culture, therefore, the intended meaning of refusing should be interpreted concerning cultural differences.

Living in a collective culture, the Chinese tend to be situation-oriented and to view events in relation to the totality, so an “is-or-is-not polarity” is often avoided. In English, people and things are placed on a continuum—man and woman, good and bad, black and white. For example, when the Chinese members of a research group are asked to elect “the best labor model” at the end of a school term, they usually keep silent. But if one of them is encouraged by the leader and bold enough to express some opinions, then others will express their approvals openly though they may not really agree in mind. By contrast, the Americans may not do like this, they will tend to express their own opinions freely.

Very often, to say “yes” for “no” or “no” for “yes” is largely a reflection of the indirect approach to communication in Chinese, through which undesirable interpersonal communications can be avoided. This contrary-to-face-value aspect of Chinese language behavior may be difficult for the Americans to interpret. One example of the Chinese uses of indirect language is evident in their practice of politely refusing an offer three times before they accept it. A Chinese guest may respond, “Please do not bother,” when he is asked if he would like a cup of tea. To a Chinese hostess, it is a signal to fetch tea, but to an American hostess, it may have left the Chinese guest thirsty without any tea at an American table.

Even the English language, with which we are very familiar, is used differently among various English-speaking cultures. In Great Britain, the language is used with euphemisms that enable the speaker to avoid expressing strong feelings. For instance, when English people wish to refuse someone, they may preface their utterances with phrases such as “I may be a little rude, but… ” or “There are just one thing in all that you have been asking that worries me a little ...” This restraint is also evident in the differences between American and British word choices. Compare the following signs seen in the United States and Britain:

Example 7:

The United States: “No dogs allowed.”

Britain: “We regret that in the interest of hygiene, dogs are not allowed on the premises.”

(Samover, 2000:130)

From these above examples, we see that culture exerts an enormous influence on language. Culture influences not only meanings of language symbols but the way people use language. Therefore, language interpretation is inseparable from culture.

We do not know clearly at what age we are able to understand the meaning of refusing through symbols and signs around us. But we do suffer a lot from not being permitted to sip mother’s milk when we are over 8 months. We call that period “断奶期” in Chinese. During that period, we firstly refuse to eat anything but cry for mother, then two days later, we have to sip some cow milk instead, still crying for mother, while the “cruel” mother is weeping in the next room, too. At last, about a week later, we totally forget mother’s milk and have cow’s milk merrily all our lives. This seems to be a very interesting experience for our human beings. Maybe, it is from this experience that we learn to understand and accept being refused although it is doomed to be a suffering both physiologically and emotionally.

Since the act of refusing or being refused is virtually a suffering, people tend to be socially negotiated to be cooperative to comfort each other. However, none of the social communications is completely cooperative, because to satisfy others’ faces is a risk of degrading your own face. Social situations always involve some degree of tension between cooperation and antagonism. As is seen from the above studies on refusal strategies, people are more cooperative in interpersonal communications, while in shopping activities, they are more antagonistic to each other so that they might be able to maintain their own interests as well as public faces.

Refusing is a speech act which involves the Politeness Principle. The studies on refusal strategies both in interpersonal communications and shopping activities display that politeness is what people in both cultures are concerned about, although the ways in which politeness is manifested are diverse due to differences in social cultures and language features. However, what is politeness and how polite an utterance is remain suspending questions to most linguists. Contrastive studies on the Politeness Principle (顾曰国, 1990, 1992) between English and Chinese seem to show that