An investigation into The refusal strategies to requests By american speakers of english And vietnamese learners of english

Abstract

This study investigated the similarities and differences between American speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English in performing the speech act of refusal. A modified-version of the discourse completion task (DCT) developed by Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz (1990 [5] was used to elicit data. The DCT consisted of six requests from the people in different social status and gender. Sixty Americans resulted in 617 refusals and sixty Vietnamese 725 refusals. The refusals were divided into strategies categorized by using version of coding categories developed by Beebe et al. Data were analyzed according to the total number and frequencies of strategies in terms of social status and gender. The results suggested that both groups, to some extent, shared similar strategies with similar frequency in making refusals. However, they differed in the frequency of direct strategies and in the degree of directness between the male and the female in each group as well. The Vietnamese used more strategies and attempt to “save face” when refusing requesters of high status; less effort was evident when requesters were of lower status