A Study Of English Refusals From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

In recent years,refusal speech act has been a heated issue.Scholars at home and abroad have studied refusals from various perspectives such as second language acquisition,cross-cultural pragmatics,and politeness principle.Fruitful results have been acquired.However,those studies are often limited into a single perspective.This study probes into English refusals from a comprehensive perspective--the Adaptation Theory.Verschueren integrated cognitive,social and cultural elements into the study of pragmatics and proposed the Adaptation Theory,which has greatly furthered the development of pragmatics.He pointed out "language use must consist of the continuous making of linguistic choices,consciously or unconsciously,for language internal(i.e.structure)and/or language external reasons".Variability,negotiability and adaptability,as the three properties of language,are abided by language users who make various language choices.Variability and negotiability together make adaptability possible.And the adaptability helps language users make choices based on various communication requirements in certain way and among the possible range,which is the core of the process of language use.Moreover,the four angles of adaptability-contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptability process,correspond to factors including language,culture,social and cognitive factors,which influence the language use.Therefore,this study adopts the framework of this new and comprehensive theory.This thesis studies English refusals that are collected from the bestseller novel The Fault in Our Stars from three angles.The first angle is the variability of English refusals.As one of the three properties of language,variability refers to the range of possibilities accessible to language users,which helps language users to make choices.The second angle is the negotiability.Refusers make various choice of refusals based on not strict rules but flexible principles.The third angle is the adaptability of English refusals,which denotes the adaptative use of English refusals in the process of conversational interaction.That is,the refusers choose linguistic forms and strategies from the possible range to adapt to the particular context to satisfy their communicative needs.Through detailed analysis of the adaptive use of English in refusing situations,the generative mechanism of refusals is explored:In the dynamic process of the speech act of refusal,aimed to the refusee s eliciting acts like request,invitation,offer,suggestion and promise,the refuser makes the appropriate choices from a variety of all the linguistic and strategic possibilities based on his/her communicative need,adapting to the contextual factors including the mental world,social world and physical world,to achieve successful communication.Although there are limitations of this study,theoretical and practical significances can be found.It studies English refusals in a new and comprehensive way,which will promote the development of the study of refusals.Besides,the adaptation theory is proved to be able to analyze the real discourse,which also promotes its own development.Moreover,it would help improve the refuser's pragmatic awareness and make approriate linguistic forms and strategies to refuse which will better achieve successful communication.