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Refusal

The speech act of refusal occurs when a speaker directly or indirectly declines a request, invitation, offer, suggestion, ...etc. Refusal is a highly face-threatening act to the listeners because it contradicts their expectations, and is habitually realized through indirect strategies. Consequently, the speech act of refusal requires a high level of pragmatic competence. Chen (1996) used semantic formula to analyze speech act sets of refusal (refusing requests, invitations, offers and suggestions), and concluded that direct refusal as “NO” was not a common strategy for any of the subjects, regardless of their language background. For example, an expression of regret, common in Americans’ refusals, was generally produced by the Chinese speakers, which might lead to unpleasant feelings between speakers in an American context.

To refuse is to respond negatively to an offer, request, invitation… etc. How to refuse is more important in many cases than the answer itself. Therefore, sending and receiving a massage of ‘no’ is a task that needs special skills. The interlocutor must know when, to whom, and how to use the appropriate way to refuse. The speech act and its social elements depend on each group and their cultural linguistic values. Those skills are very important to be acquired since the “inability to say ‘no’ clearly has led many nonnative speakers to offend their interlocutors” (Romas, 1991).

Although investigations into the speech act of refusal have been limited, some significant studies have been conducted. Al-Shalawi (1997) investigates the semantic formulas used by Arabic and American male undergraduate students performing refusals, the result of his investigation reveals that Arabs and Americans use similar semantic formulas in refusing offers, requests, invitation, and suggestions. These results of Al-Shalawi’s (ibid) study shows that there are no significant differences between Arabs and Americans except in the employment of direct ‘no’ which is used by Arabs much more frequently than Americans. They, however, differ in the number of semantic formulas used in each situation and in the context of their explanations that reflect some values of Arab and American cultures. The choices of semantic formulas reflect the different characteristics of each culture. Americans are more straightforward and concerned about the clarity of their explanations than Arabs.