A Study On Chinese Refusal Strategy Changes And The Consistency With Chinese Cultural Value Changes

The differences of speech acts are regarded as the main reason in causingcommunication failures and misunderstandings. Refusal speech act, as one of the speechact, is defined as refusal to those directives put forward by the interlocutor. Refusal ispotentially face-threatening and impolite. As a result, various refusal strategies areapplied. And the correct and appropriate use of the strategies is crucial. However, therefusal strategies will never be still for they will change with culture. Since the reformand opening up policy in1978, Chinese cultural value has changed a lot. Thecomparison of the refusal strategies between the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy and now and the discussion of Chinese refusal strategy changes in culturalperspective can not only find the changes of Chinese refusal strategies over more thanthirty years, but also help better understanding cultural change and the influence ofglobalization to culture. The thesis takes Chinese refusal speech act as the researchobject. Ten Chinese movies of the first ten years after the reform and opening-up policyfrom1978to1988(1980s) and2010and2011(2010s) are selected respectively whichare strictly restrained to social life movies. And100items of refusal are selectedrandomly for both periods to study the changes of Chinese refusal strategies basedmainly on the refusal strategy framework put forward by Beebe, Takahashi, andUliss-Welts in1990. Meanwhile, scholars represented by Faure and Fang put forwardthat Chinese cultural value is changing and becomes more and more paradoxical, withtraditional Chinese cultural values and modern western cultural values coexisted. Basedon the close relationship between speech act and cultural value, the thesis is going todiscuss whether the refusal strategy changes are consistent with Chinese cultural valuechanges. In the field of cultural value study, Hofstede and Hall’s theories are regarded asthe milestone. The thesis will apply their cultural dimensions ofindividualism/collectivism (I/C), high power distance and low power distance(HPD/LPD), and high context and low context (HC/LC) in analysis.The results of the study show that there are obvious changes of the refusalstrategies over the thirty years: there are more direct refusal strategies and feweradjuncts in the2010s. And though indirect strategy is the main refusal strategy for bothperiods, the subordinate strategies of it change a lot. In analyzing the consistencybetween the refusal strategy changes and Chinese cultural value changes, the author firstly infers and generalizes Chinese cultural value changes reflected by Chineserefusal strategy changes found in the thesis by combining Hofstede and Hall’s culturaldimension theory and the refusal strategy characteristics for I/C, HPD/LPD, and HC/LCput forward in previous studies. Then the Chinese cultural value changes found arecompared with the changes put forward in previous studies. It is finally found that thereis a consistency between Chinese refusal strategy changes and Chinese cultural valuechanges.