A Contrastive Study Between American And Chinese Refusal Strategies In The Workplace

Speech Act Theory was first proposed by the British philosopher J.L.Austin in the late1960 s,according to Austin,what we say has three kinds of meaning,that is,propositional meaning,illocutionary meaning and perlocutionary meaning.Propositional meaning refers to the literal meaning of what is said;illocutionary meaning means the social function of what is said;perlocutionary meaning is concerned about the effect of what is said.A Refusal Speech Act is essentially an expression of negative reply to a request,an order,a suggestion or an invitation.As a face-threatening speech act,in any of the situations,such as occupation communication,business negotiations and political consultations,it needs to be performed carefully by speakers to reduce the degree of face-threatening,so as to avoid the embarrassing scenes or to maintain a harmonious relationship.Though researches on Refusal Speech Act has attracted great attention both abroad and at home.Most of them are the comparative study,which almost focus on collecting data from American and Chinese students or politician's speech and statement.Study on refusal in the workplace is not done enough yet.For these reasons,the author tries to make an analysis of the refusal strategies in American and Chinese workplace.The research data is collected from American workplace TV series Ugly Betty and Chinese workplace series A Story of Lala's promotion.After online watching and transcription of the Refusal Speech Acts.100 refusal speech acts are collected respectively,the research collected 205 American refusal strategies and 187 Chinese refusal strategies.It takes Speech Act Theory,Politeness Principle and Face Theory as theoretical framework to explore similarities and differences between American and Chinese in their use of refusal strategy in the workplace by combining the quantitative and qualitative methods.Quantitative approach is used to count the numbers of American and Chinese refusal strategies and the using frequency in the collecting data.While qualitative method is employed to analyze the type of the refusal strategies and the possible reasons of different choices in American and Chinese workplace.Through the research,it is intended to answer:(1)What are the differences in the use of Direct Refusal Strategies in American and Chinese workplace?(2)What are the differences in the use of Indirect Refusal Strategies in American and Chinese workplace?(3)What are the possible reasons for the different choices?The study reveals the following findings:(1)Chinese and Americans share some similarities in the performance of Refusal Speech Act,but there are also differences in the use of refusal strategies.In the workplace,Americans use more strategies than Chinese.Moreover,the using frequency of direct refusal strategies in America is far more than Chinese(25.37% VS 12.83%).(2)Both Americans and Chinese prefer to refuse people in excuse,explanation of reason;statement of alternative and avoidance strategy.However,in China,people like to use affirmative assessment and statement of principle strategy.While in America,the using percentage of statement of regret,statement of appreciation and set conditions for future/past acceptance is relatively higher.(3)The cause of these differences may be due to the different perceptions of social distance,social power and different understanding of individualism and collectivism.