Linguistic Realization Patterns of Refusals by EFL University Students

Refusals in English are complex speech acts that balance social norms, politeness, and the
specific communicative context in which they occur. Labelled as illocutionary (Austin, 1962),
directive or commissive (Searle, 1969) and face-threatening (Brown & Levinson, 1987); these
are frequently used speech acts where a speaker rejects or declines an offer, request, invitation,
or suggestion. The present paper investigates the language forms of refusals produced by two
groups of EFL students: native Turkish and native Macedonian speakers. The analysed data
was gathered through an online discourse completion task that includes multiple situations with
various contexts and different social relations between the interlocutors. The participants of the
study are specifically first year university students, who are learning English as a foreign
language. The responses are analysed following the framework of Beebe et al. (1990), who
classified refusal strategies in accordance to the degree of politeness and face-threatening
nature of the response. The main aim of the paper is to explore the pragmatic strategies used to
convey refusals and to examine the role of social variables in shaping refusals. The initial
findings show that there are slight changes into the refusal forms and the strategies applied due
to the change of social factors. However, it was concluded that both sample groups share the
preference for indirect refusals, specifically in the form of an explanation. The research
highlights the complexity of refusals as communicative acts and offers insight into the
interrelations among language, social norms and culture
Keywords: refusals, speech acts, EFL
References
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Harvard University Pres