Email this article 
Hide
Show all
An Investigation of the Use of politeness strategies in refusal among Characters with different power relations in English and Farsi Novels
Abstract
One of the important concerns of communicative way of learning is to be able to convey meaning and not just physical words in a language. The study of speech acts could possibly help achieve this. When using speech acts, one should take into consideration the conversational rules of the language and in order to establish a safe and harmonious conversation, it is better to use certain strategies to eliminate their possible threatening effects. Attempt is made in the present study using a mixed-method design, to investigate the employment of politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), among the interlocutors with different power relations in English and Farsi novels, when using the speech act of refusal. The speech act of refusal addressed in this study is a face threatening act (FTA) (Brown & Levinson, 1987), which may be used differently by speakers of different languages, with different power relations, in different situations. The materials used are five English and five Farsi novels written by native speakers of English and Farsi. The taxonomy of Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990) were employed in order to categories different types of refusal. The frequency of their use and their percentages were calculated manually. The results indicated that even though reflecting two different cultures, the similarities among the English and Farsi novels regarding the use of both speech acts, were more than the differences. The differences were more obvious in the employment of politeness strategies. The findings of this study will probably give insights into the pragmatic and conversational rules of both languages.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Allami, H., & Naeimi, A. (2011). A cross-linguistic study of refusals: An analysis of pragmatic competence development in Iranian EFL learners. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(1), 385-406.
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beebe, L., Takahashi, T., & Uliss-Weltz, R. (1990). Pragmatic Transfer in ESL Refusal. In R. C. Scarcella, E. S. Anderson, & S. D. Krashen, Developing Communicative Competence in a Second Language (pp. 55-74). New York: Newbury House Publishers.
Blum-Kulka, S. (1992). 'The metapragmatics of politeness in Israeli society.' In Watts R. J., et al. (Eds.). 255-280.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interaction. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. (1989). “Pragmatics” The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of language (2 ed). Cambridge: CUP.
Eelen, G. (2014). A critique of politeness theories. London and New York: Routledge. (Originally published in 2001).
Fraser, B. & Nolen, W. (1981). The association of deference with linguistic form. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 27, 93-111.
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual. Essays on face-to-face behavior. London: The Penguin Press.
Gu, Y. (1990). 'Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese.' Journal of Pragmatics, 14(2), 237-257.
Hosseini, H., & Talebinezhad, M. R. (2014). A comparative study of the use of refusal strategies between Iranian EFL learners and native speakers of English. International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World (IJLLALW), 5(2), 176-188.
Ide, S. (1989). 'Formal forms and discernment: two neglected aspects of linguistic politeness.' Multilingua, 8(2-3), 223-248.
Kazemi Gol, N. (2013). A contrastive study of the speech act of refusal: Iranian ESL learners and native English speaking Americans. Unpublished MA Thesis. The University of Toledo, the U.S.
Köksal, D. Pragmatic approach to cross-cultural communication in the business world. Turkey: Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, 630-637.
Kwon, J. (2004). Expressing refusals in Korean and in American English. Multilingua-Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 23(4), 339-364.
Lakoff, R. (1973). 'The logic of politeness; or minding your p's and q's.' Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 8, 292-305.
Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Lin, M. F. (2014). An Interlanguage Pragmatic Study on Chinese EFL Learners' Refusal: Perception and Performance. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 5(3), 642-653.
Mezuláník, Jiří. (1998). “How to Approach Complaints in Banking Business Communication after Year 2000”. Future of the Banking after the Year 2000 in the World and in the Czech Republic III, Part I, pp. 229-236. ISBN: 80-7248-017-0. Karviná.
Moaveni, H. T. (2014). A study of refusal strategies by American and international students at an American university. All Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects. Paper 355.
http://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/355
Searle, J. R. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in society 5, 1-23.
Tabatabaei, S. (2014). A pragmatic study of refusal to invitations by English and Persian speakers. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 4(9), 152-165.
Tamimi Sa’d, S. H., & Qadermazi, Z. (2014). Refusal strategies of Iranian university English as a foreign language and non-English learners in native language: a comparative study. CEPS Journal, 4(4), 121-142.
Vaezi, R. (2011). A Contrastive Study of the Speech Act of Refusal between Iranian EFL Learners and Persian Native Speakers. Cross-Cultural Communication, 7(2), 213-218.
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.7p.180
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature
To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.