中美拒绝言语行为及策略对比研究_英语论文

A Comparative Study of strategies in Chinese and American Refusal Speech Act

摘要

在跨文化交际中，语言使用者能在一个特定的社会文化环境中正确的使用和理解语言尤为重要。而拒绝用语在我们日常交际中是使用最频繁的一类交际用语。然而当我们拒绝别人时，特别是当我们拒绝其他国家的人时，许多误解就会随之而来。在这些误解中，对社会行为准则的忽视往往会引起更为严重的后果。

因此，本文旨在从跨文交际的视角，借助于一些理论框架，分析、对比中美两国人民拒绝言语行为及其策略的异同。此外本研究试图通过一些日常生活中的例子来分析影响两国人选取拒绝言语行为策略的潜在的文化价值因素。研究结果表明，一方面中美两国人在实施间接拒绝言语时，都会采取相类似的策略，另一方面由于中国人认为拒绝别人是件有损面子的事所以中国人在使用拒绝言语时会比美国人更含蓄。

关键词：拒绝策略；面子；礼貌；文化；比较

Abstract

In cross-cultural communication, it is crucial for language speakers to use and understand the language properly in a certain socio-cultural context while refusals are one of the most frequent performances that people often use in our daily communications. When refusing people, especially speakers from different countries, many misunderstandings come out. Among all the mistakes, the disregard of potential social norms may induce more serious consequences.

Consequently, this paper is aimed to analyze and compare the similarities and differences of refusals between Chinese and Americans from the view of intercultural communications. According to theoretical frameworks of the speech act theory and politeness principles, the paper tends to work out similarities and differences of refusal strategies adopted by Chinese and American speakers. Furthermore, the study attempts to figure out the underlying cultural factors which affect choosing refusal strategies by some daily examples. The results show that, on the one hand, both Chinese and Americans use the same indirect refusal strategies. On the other hand, Chinese, to some extent, are more indirect than Americans when they employ refusals due to face-threatening acts.  

Keywords: refusal strategy; face; politeness; culture; comparison

Contents

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………1

2. Literature Review………………………………………………………2

3. Study of Relevant Theories ………………………………………...….4

3.1 Refusal speech act………………………………………….………….4

3.2 Grice’s cooperative principle (CP)……………………………………..4

3.3 Politeness theory………………………………………………………...5

3.4 Summary……………………………….………………………………..5

4. Similarity& Difference of Refusal Speech Acts in Sino-American

Speakers ……………..……………………………………………………..5

4.1 Similarity of refusal speech acts in Sino-American speakers……..……5

4.2 Different refusal speech acts in Sino-American speakers……….……...6

5. Analysis of the Refusal Strategies…………………………..…………10

5.1 Refusal strategies in communication context……………….…………10

5.2 Influential factors of the refusal strategies……..………………………10

6. Conclusion……………………………………………………………..12

Works Cited……………………………………………………………….14