A Study On Refusal Strategies Of College Nursing Majors

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the refusal strategies employed by collegenursing majors, which is studied in the framework of speech act theory, cooperativeprinciple, politeness principle and face theory.The survey is carried out among120students from Shanghai Institute of HealthScience in the form of DCT Questionnaire.The initiating acts of refusing are: requesting, inviting, offering and suggestion. In theprocedure of data analysis, the factor of social status is taken as a controlled variable. Theresults are displayed and discussed on the basis of the data processed through MicrosoftExcel.The results indicate that the subjects used27strategies among which the most popularone is excuses or explanations; the second one is direct refusal. In terms of content, thesubjects are most likely to employ the following strategies: using excuses or explanations,educating or criticizing and expressing regrets; in terms of lexical use, the subjects arelikely to use degree adverbs and alerts; in terms of syntax, the structure of “yes…but”occupies the dominant percentage.Data analysis shows that the subjects are status-conscious. The higher the social statusof the refusees, the more scores all the strategies get and the refusal act tends to be morepolite; the subjects use degree adverbs after excuses or explanation and then expressregrets. When the refusers are in a higher social status, the subjects prefer indirect refusalstrategies: excuses or explanation, educating or criticizing people, principle or rules. Whenthe subjects are refusing their friends and classmates who have the equal social status withthem, they are most likely to use excuses and explanations, or just refuse directly.The findings show that the subjects refuse differently when being requested, invited,offered and suggested. When being requested, the subjects explain most and use the mostnumber of strategies. When being invited, they use the least number of strategies. In thesituation of offer, the subjects say no directly most often. In the situation of suggestion, thestrategy of self-defense is most preferred.It is hoped that the study may make contributions to a better understanding of refusal strategies used by young Chinese females in the Chinese context. Besides, as the subjectsare nursing majors, their answers may also shed some light on the relations betweenmedical personnel and patients.