A Study On The Pragmatic Reverse Transfer Of L2 To L1:Evidence From The Use Of Refusals In Chinese

At present, studies on reverse transfer (L2 influence on L1) have received some attention in the linguistic field. L2 influence on L1 in phonology, lexicon, syntax and semantics has been proved by scholars both at home and abroad. However, reverse transfer at pragmatic level still needs further verification.The present study aims to prove the pragmatic transfer of L2 to L1 by analyzing the use of Chinese ESL leaners'refusals in Chinese context. Based on the literature review of previous studies, this study chooses refusals as the case and takes the frequency of refusal strategies as the variables, so as to investigate the L2 influence on L1 at pragmatic level. Two research questions are thus addressed:(1) Will acquiring English influence the use of Chinese refusals in Chinese context at pragmatic level? (2) Will the status of refusal interlocutors and the type of refusal scenarios affect the reverse transfer?77 advanced Chinese ESL learners,77 low-level Chinese ESL learners and 22 native English speakers were selected as the subjects in this study, a contrastive analysis on the use of the refusals was carried out by means of discourse completion test. Through analyzing the research data, basic conclusions were obtained:1) Acquiring English exerts inverse influence on the use of Chinese refusals in Chinese context at pragmatic level in terms of significant changes in the frequency of refusal strategies,-2) Certain status of refusal interlocutors and type of refusal scenarios affect the reverse transfer, that is, refusing an equal status interlocutor rather than a lower or higher status interlocutor and refusing suggestions but not requests, invitations and offers, enjoy much wider application of refusal strategies.