A Study Of Refusal Based On The C-R-A Model

As an interesting linguistic phenomenon, refusal has been drawing many scholars'attention at home and abroad. They studied refusals from different points of view, ranging from cross-culture to second language acquisition, from language transfer to pragmaticss including speech act, politeness principle, face theory, adaptation and so on. The previous studies have made much progress and shed light on the future study, letting people know more about the nature of refusals. However, focus has been mainly on the perspective of the refuser, neglecting another important participant, the refusee's meaning interpretation. There still remain some issues unsolved:(1) why do people choose different refusal strategies in verbal communication? (2) How can the refusee understand the refuser's communicative intention? (3) How can people conduct successful refusing in verbal communication?Liao Qiaoyun's C-R-A model (2005) integrates the merits of Cooperative Principle, Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory and it turns out to be more efficient and more explanatory in interpreting some pragmatics phenomena, including refusals. The model proposes that for successful communication, cooperation is the prerequisite, relevance is a necessary condition and adaptation is a regulatory mechanism. In order to achieve successful refusal communication, cooperation, seeking for optimal relevance, adapting to the present context (physical world, social world, and mental world) are all necessary, no matter in the process of refusers'production or refusees'interpretation. We think that refusal is verbal communication of negative responding action to originals such as request, invitation, advice, order, promise, offer, etc, in which the participants seek optimal relevance and make dynamic adaptation to the cognitive ability, experience canvas and many contextual factors.By analyzed the collected language materials, from the perspective of both refusers and refusees, the mechanism of refusal meaning production and interpretation is given in the present thesis based on C-R-A model. Based on being cooperative in attitude, the refuser first seeks optimal relevance between the utterance and communicative intention according to the cognitive assumption, and then chooses the utterance that can adapt to the participants'present context. The refusee first supposes that the refuser is cooperative, and then seeks optimal relevance between the utterance and the communicative intention, choosing appropriate meaning by adapting to the present context. We conclude that only when the refusal meaning production and meaning interpretation tend to be dynamic equivalence, can refusal verbal communications be successful.Though limitations inevitably exist in this thesis, it bears some practical and theoretical significance, for it has studied refusals based on a relatively more comprehensive perspective and hopefully can help us to understand more about the speech act of refusing, to guide refusal teaching and successful refusal communication to.