luận văn gender distinctions in refusal face saving strategies a case study at thu dau mot university

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES LE VAN DUC GENDER DISTINCTIONS IN REFUSAL FACE-SAVING STRATEGIES: A CASE STUDY AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAJOR

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

LE VAN DUC

GENDER DISTINCTIONS IN REFUSAL FACE-SAVING

STRATEGIES: A CASE STUDY AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAJOR CODE: 8 22 02 01

MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

BINH DUONG – 2022

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

LE VAN DUC

GENDER DISTINCTIONS IN REFUSAL FACE-SAVING

STRATEGIES: A CASE STUDY AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAJOR CODE: 8 22 02 01

MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Supervised by

SIDSEL (CECILIA) MILLERSTROM, Ph.D -

BINH DUONG – 2022

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Sidsel (Cecilia) Millerstrom I am blessed to have known her and to have been accepted as her student in this MA program From the point of a teacher, an advisor, and a mentor, she is my strongest advocate My research skills have been considerably developing with her precious guidance and continuous encouragement I extend my enormous gratitude for her kind support, efficient assistance and valuable correction of all this work in manuscript that I have greatly benefited

I wish to express my deep indebtedness to Dr Tran Thanh Du for his invaluable suggestions, helpful advice, brilliant scholarship, demanding teaching and supervision I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr Tran Ngoc Mai for her discerning comments, knowledgeable suggestions and kind-heartedness she contributed to my thesis proposal

My sincere thanks go to all my teachers at TDMU for their profound knowledge and outstanding teaching during my long study

I especially express my heartfelt gratitude to Dr Nguyen Hoang Tuan, who suggested an insightful research subject for my MA thesis, for his distinctive guidance, insightful comments, endless support and benevolence at the very first step to my present MA dissertation

I am indebted to all the research participants without their valuable responses, opinions and ideas on the questionnaires, this project would not have been accomplished

Finally, I owe the completion of this dissertation to my parents, my siblings, my wife and my two children, who have always given me their love, understanding and encouragement throughout my study

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

I certify that this thesis entitled “GENDER DISTINCTIONS IN REFUSAL SAVING STRATEGIES: A CASE STUDY AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY” is my own work

FACE-This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institution

Binh Duong, July 10, 2022

Lê Văn Đức

RETENTION OF USE

I hereby state that I, LE VAN DUC, being the candidate for the degree of Master of English Language, accept the requirement of the University relating to the retention

and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the originality of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of theses

Binh Duong, July 10, 2022

Lê Văn Đức

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF FIGURES viii

ABSTRACT ix

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Statement of the problem 1

1.2 Aims and research questions of the study 2

1.3 Significance of the study 4

1.4 Limitations of the study 6

1.5 Organization of the thesis 6

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 7

3.2 Research design and data gathering instruments 28

3.3 The research site and the population for the present study 28

3.4 Data collection procedures 28

3.5 Ethical considerations 30

3.6 Theoretical framework and explanations for coding semantic formulae 31

3.7 Data coding and analysis 37

Summary 37

CHAPTER 4 RESULTS 39

4.1 Face-saving strategies employed by males and females for refusal 39

4.1.1 Face-saving strategies employed by males for SARs 39

4.1.2 Face-saving strategies employed by females for SARs 41

4.2 The total number of refusal strategies employed by males and females 44

4.3 Comparisons on the frequencies of refusal strategies in each situation 46

4.4 Gender distinctions in face-saving strategies yielded by analyzing independent sample t-test 54

Summary 56

CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 58

5.1 Discussion on refusal face-saving strategies 58

5.2 The extent of gender distinctions in SAR performance 61

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

DCT: Discourse Completion Task EFL: English as a Foreign Language FL: Foreign Language

FTA: Face threatening act L2: Second Language SAR: Speech act of refusal SAT: Speech Act Theory

SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences TDMU: Thu Dau Mot University

LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1 Strategies for SARs employed by males

Table 4.2 Strategies for SARs employed by females

Table 4.3 The independent sample t-test on the refusal strategies employed by males

and females

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 4.1 The percentage of refusal strategies employed by males and females

Figure 4.2 The frequencies on refusal strategies for situation 1

Figure 4.3 The frequencies on refusal strategies for situation 2

Figure 4.4 The frequencies on refusal strategies for situation 3

Figure 4.5 The frequencies on refusal strategies for situation 4

Figure 4.6 The frequencies on refusal strategies for situation 5

Figure 4.7 The frequencies on refusal strategies for situation 6

Figure 4.8 The frequencies on refusal strategies for situation 7

Figure 4.9 The frequencies on refusal strategies for situation 8

Figure 4.10 The frequencies on refusal strategies for situation 9

Figure 4.11 The frequencies on refusal strategies for situation 10

ABSTRACT

The speech acts of refusal (SARs) potentially contains the sense of bluntness and discourtesy, which can make it difficult for non-native speakers to say no in a foreign language and as a result, the current research is to investigate refusal face-saving strategies employed by English majors at Thu Dau Mot University (TDMU) and to explore possible gender distinctions in their refusal strategy choices The Discourse Completion Task (DCT) with 10 actual refusal situations of invitations and requests was employed as the research instrument One hundred twenty participants including 60 males and 60 females joined the study, resulting in approximately 1200 SARs The quantitative approach was utilized to keep the data analysis process highly satisfying and reliable The data analysis was mainly guided through the framework set by Beebe et al (1990) with some modification To identify face-saving strategies EFL learners expressed, the collected data were processed and classified according to the refusal strategies in selected situations The subjects’ refusal strategies were analyzed by matching word(s), phrase(s), or sentence(s) that met a particular semantic criterion or strategy Later on, the collected data were entered in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS - version 16) software to undergo the relevant statistical analysis The frequency of participants’ responses was calculated and presented by percentage to see different face-saving strategies they preferred to use The score means of both gender groups were compared through independent sample t-

test to investigate gender distinctions The findings show that participants differ in the

ways they perform refusals Regret, and giving excuses or explanations were the preferred formulas used in SARs reflecting their reluctance to express their disinclination to comply The choice of these semantic formulas indicates the influence of Vietnamese culture in respondents’ realizations of refusals in English In addition, the frequency of SARs by males is different from that by females, though they do share some similarities Related to distinctions in term of gender, males and females also differ in the ways they say “NO” to their conversational partners Males and females are apt to express refusals more elaborately

Key words: Gender, Distinctions, Refusal, Face, SAR, FTA, saving,

Face-threatening, Strategies

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem

Success in communication depends greatly on the ability to recognize speakers’ communicative intentions and pragmatic meaning of their utterances because human communication is a combination of cooperation and understanding Actually, those who may be regarded as fluent in a second language thanks to their phonetic, syntactic and semantic knowledge of that language are often still unable to produce language that is socially and culturally appropriate Larina (2008) indicates that numerous problems in communication occur because people not only speak different languages but use them in different ways according to specific social and linguistic norms, values, and social-cultural convention

Existing studies of speech acts can be divided into two aspects: on the one hand, the studies which examine native speakers’ speech acts realization, either focusing on one language (intra-language studies) or two languages; on the other hand, we have the studies which investigate characteristics of non-native speakers’ speech acts in comparison to native speakers’ (inter-language studies) Compared with certain speech acts which have received more attention than others such as requests and apologies, refusals are still one of the less researched areas The speech act of refusals (SARs) has been examined on interpersonal communication, cross-cultural and second language pragmatics, education, and psychology and from different perspectives, including the linguistic and non-linguistic realization of refusals in various settings, perceptions of refusals Félix-Brasdefer (2008:168) listed 51 studies on refusals and described them in light of the methods employed for collecting pragmatic data among native speakers of different languages American English has been so far the most co mmonly investigated language in native and non-native refusal studies, followed by Japanese, British English, and Italian Therefore, Janney and Arndt (1993) claim that it seems necessary to scrutinize it in other languages and cultures

to have a better understanding of various concepts in other societies

To collect the data for analysis, a questionnaire was distributed to 120

students (60 males and 60 females) of different age groups at Thu Dau Mot University (TDMU) Then, the participants were divided into 4 age group categories (18-20; 21-23; 24-26 and over 26 years old) The questionnaire consists of 10 different situations of requests and invitations Accordingly, the participants are supposed to place themselves in the respondent’s position and write down exactly how they would verbally refuse the various situations Particularly, the gender distinctions in refusal face-saving strategies would be observed and identified Besides, the research investigated the common refusal utterances among five categories according to education backgrounds namely freshman, sophomore, junior, senior and part-time students It is remarkable that quantitative approach was employed for data analysis

1.2 Aims and research questions of the study

Nguyen (1998) illustrated 12 factors in his view consisting of age, gender, residence, mood, occupation, personality, topic, place, communicative environment/setting, social distance, time pressure, and position that may affect the choice of refusal strategies in communication Notably, the current research mainly concentrated on the gender factor to determine the possible distinctions in face-saving strategies when English speakers perform SARs

The study aims to provide a detailed description of refusal face-saving strategies in order to find out possible gender distinctions and linguistic phenomena It also gives EFL learners and researchers applicable theoretical knowledge of such significant aspects This study may pave the way for further research in the field of Vietnamese language pragmatics Accordingly, this research is vital because it may reduce gender-based misunderstandings and conflicts Identifying gender distinctions may enable individuals to maintain the well-being of their relationships and reinforce cooperation and mutual trust (Gray, 1992:4)

This academic work is expected to create its own values Accordingly, it will help EFL learners gain further knowledge and have an excellent command of face-saving strategies for refusal cases while they are performing SARs Politeness plays a crucial role in achieving a harmonious relationship and it is also a good catalyst for forming a strong connection among society members as well Therefore, the results of the study will also help EFL students learn how to prevent refusal utterances from threatening the others’ face Moreover, this research also makes them recognize the importance of uttering words appropriately and wisely for a good face-saving speech act In terms of communication, the research will make a major contribution towards mastering workable face-saving strategies in general and possible gender distinctions in particular so as to acquire effective communication under any circumstances In the field of linguistics, this research will add another source as a useful reference for further research The readers will be able to comprehend the refusal principles through detailed explanations about a wide range of terms Besides, the research shows all linguists’ definitions related to them, as well as the types and theories that have been proposed in this field of linguistics, so this work may be of true value to researchers interested in this subject

The aim of this study is to identify the face-saving strategies implemented by students at TDMU while performing the speech acts of refusal Then, from the strategies identified in the data analysis process, the current research investigates the possible gender distinctions on the choice of face-saving strategies Therefore, this study specifically focuses on finding the answers for the following research questions:

1 Which face saving-strategies do students at TDMU employ to perform SARs?

2 To what extent do face-saving strategies in refusals of invitations and requests differ between male and female EFL learners at TDMU?

1.3 Significance of the study

Politeness is a social behavior common to all cultures It is a major element of everyday interaction The politeness concept can be studied linguistically (verbally) or non-linguistically (non-verbally) The focus of this study is linguistic politeness which is the way of being polite to others by the proper use of language in order to employ refusal face-saving strategies appropriately Understanding how people give polite utterances can be a great help to the communication gap among people in general and between women and men in particular

Many people devalue the importance of refusal face-saving strategies

This is simply because they believe the right response is to agree on something even though they do not like to or want to do it However, it is complicated since misbehavior in this domain can result in the interlocutor’s feeling of being shocked, angry, or even seriously insulted It is because everybody expects the appreciation and respect from others In addition, Vietnam is a country with diversified cultures, so a wide range of social and linguistic norms for different communicative situations vary as well

As a result, this study is an attempt to provide a general

comprehension of refusal face-saving strategies and a comparison of Gender

distinctions in refusal face-saving strategies when producing SARs of

students at TDMU

From a sociolinguistic perspective, refusals are pivotal because they are sensitive to social factors such as gender, age, level of education, power, social distance, and because an appropriate SAR varies from one culture to another

From a pragmatic perspective, refusals are also crucial because a refusal may engage with successive efforts at directness; indirectness or politeness that are appropriate to a specific setting The choice of indirectness in refusal and the appropriate degree of politeness emp loyed depend on the relationship between the participants, age, gender, and the situation

Refusals in Vietnamese contexts have not yet been widely investigated, and this research makes the contribution to an understanding of the structure and interactive nature of this speech act among Vietnamese students Although, the SARs can be used in response to requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions (Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss -Weltz, 1990), FelixBrasdefer (2008) examined refusal in three situations including requests, invitations, and suggestions Nevertheless, to have a comprehensive understanding of SARs, ten typical situations which refusals occur, are examined in this research The focus of this study is on the realization of gender distinctions in refusal face-saving strategies The SAR was selected for this study because it represents an interactive speech act in which the consideration of face may vary from speaker to speaker, verbal to non-verbal strategies, and informal to formal situations A SAR utt ered by participants is identified during the interaction, and calls for the participants’ efforts to take face-saving strategies into account when

refusing requests, suggestions, invitations or offers

Since refusal is a speech act potentially including a level of rudeness and discourtesy, performing inappropriate refusal strategies may harm the relationship between interlocutors (Hassani, Mardani, & Hossein, 2011) Dealing with this subject to university students is regarded as a challenging task because they may not be aware of the significance of effective communication in general and face-saving strategies in particular It is obvious that politeness may be highly appreciated by a large number of individuals including students Overall, in the current study it is assumed that there may be some gender distinctions in face-saving strategies for refusal utterances because interlocutors may wish to soften the negative effects of refusal by pursuing a variety of strategies in an attempt to save face Therefore, this research mainly examined the strategies and the features of gender distinctions in refusal face-saving speech acts

1.4 Limitations of the study

There exist several limitations in the current research due to inevitable reasons and COVID-19 pandemic is one of the major challenges hindering the researcher from approaching the desirable number of participants as expected As a consequence, the study’s sample size is limited and it is apparent that one hundred respondents cannot represent Vietnamese communication style as a whole Additionally, the time constraint is also an obstacle to carry out the study and the researcher might not learn in depth about every aspect of the research problems

1.5 Organization of the thesis

Chapter 1 begins with a statement of the aim of this investigation on which face-saving strategies are used by participants to perform SARs and the identification of possible gender distinctions in refusal face-saving strategies Then, the significance of the current research is stated in details Next, views of various researchers are discussed More different studies on a variety of refusal strategies are reviewed The research questions for the present study are simultaneously provided The chapter is concluded by presenting limitations of the research In chapter 2, the literature review discusses the major formulations of Speech Act Theory (SAT) The theoretical frameworks used for this study are also discussed including Grice’s (1975) and Goffman’s (1967) influential concepts and models especially the studies by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) This is followed by a critical overview of SAT and the notions of face-saving strategies with attention to the SARs Chapter 3 presents an outline of the research methodology employed in this study It begins with a description of the selection of participants, data collection instruments, a classific ation of the strategies used to analyze the data and procedure Then a framework of the data analysis is presented Chapter 4 reports, discusses and analyzes the results of the data obtained from the questionnaires Finally, chapter 5 presents the conclusion of the study with a discussion of the findings, limitations of the study, and suggestions for future investigations

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction

This chapter presents a literature review in the area of pragmatics and it investigates all key theories related to the present study A broad examination of language is discussed in order to explore the topic-related concepts such as face, face-saving, face-threatening and refusal An overview of previous studies will be examined

In addition, chapter 2 is devoted to an overview and basic comparison of theoretical accounts of notions on face and face-threatening acts It concentrates on the main theoretical framework presentation of Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness and Grice’s Co-operative principles to identify students’ face-saving strategies in refusal

2.2 Concepts of speech acts

People use a certain language to interact with others in daily conversations They are making utterances to express their feeling or thought and employing a wide range of speech acts Speech act is also the utterance which shows the action of the speaker According to Yule (1996:47), people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words, they perform actions through those utterances to express themselves Moreover, Yule defines speech acts in English, are commonly given specific cases, such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, or request From that explanation, it can apparently come to the conclusion that language is not only used to exchange thoughts or express ideas, but also it is used to perform a variety o f speech acts

Austin (1962) proposed that the speech act conveys information through an utterance followed by a particular action In order to actualize communication purposes, people tend to perform intended speech acts while giving a talk Levinson (1983:236) defined that a speech act is doing things by uttering something, so people are using certain words to perform communicative speech acts in real contextual cases In other words, a speech act is an utterance that infers a performative function in la nguage and

communication process In addition, Austin (1962) also claimed that there is a close connection between speech acts and language functions Communicative actions acquired in everyday life requires using essential words under appropriate circumstances In other words, when people say something, they are simultaneously accomplishing a communicative action in real contexts According to Rosdiana (2018), communication is proved to be successful if it covers two aspects The speaker conveys the ideas by making speech acts and the listener responds to that information

Austin (1962) proposed that a speech act is a unit of speaking and performs different functions in communication This researcher believed that a single speech act actually consists of three separate but related speech acts: locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts

Whenever speakers create an utterance, they perform a locutionary act which is regarded as the act of producing a linguistically appropriate expression Moreover, people usually utter a speech act with a variety of

purposes Take an example “Could you please give me a pen?” The speaker

both utter and ask the listener to give him/ her a pen This kind of act which is produced with a communicative purpose in mind is linguistically known as illocutionary act The illocutionary act is the function of the utterance that the speaker has in mind to show the intended communicative purpose and to obtain that purpose through an utterance It can be further identifie d

with another example for the statement “It's cold in here” This sentence

contains the illocutionary force of a statement, an offer, an explanation, or a request It might be uttered by someone who is experiencing such a cold weather condition It can also be uttered by a person who intends to turn off the air-conditioner so that he/ she feels better

Perlocutionary acts occur when a speech act has an impact on a certain statement When the question is raised “Could you please give me a pen?”, the questioner expects the act of giving the pen to be implemented which is considered as its perlocutionary force The perlocutionary act refers to the conversational partner’s recognition of and response to the illocutionary act

Among the aforementioned three speech acts, the perlocutionary act is proved the most important mainly because it is actually what the speaker desires to obtain through the action of uttering the sentence Searle (1969) suggested a five-way classification of illocutionary acts as follows:

a Representatives: These speech acts constitute assertions carrying true or false values (e.g statements)

b Directives: In these speech acts, there is an effort on the part of the speaker to have the hearer do something (e.g requests, advice)

c Commissives: This kind of speech acts creates an obligation on the part of the speaker; which specifically means they commit the speaker to doing something (e.g promises)

d Expressives: These speech acts express an attitude or an inner state of the speaker (e.g apologies, congratulations, compliments)

e Declaratives: These are speech acts in which declarative statements are successfully performed and no psychological state is expressed (e.g ex -communications)

The aforesaid concepts have made a substantial contribution to the understanding of refusals of requests and invitations which would be thoroughly gone into details and investigated in this research Those notions would undoubtedly play a pivotal role in creating the central and main theories for the analysis of refusal strategies to place too much reliance on in this research

2.3 Concepts of refusal

Refusal is a type of speech act that is projected as a response to another individual’s request, invitation, offer or suggestion which means it is not speaker-initiative (Hassani, Mardani, & Hossein, 2011) Based on Ramos (1991), a refusal is to respond negatively to an offer, request, and invitation Notably, refusals are face-threatening acts (Brown and Levinson, 1987) and belong to the category of commissives because they commit the refuser to (not) performing an action (Searle, 1977) Refusals function as a response to an initiating act and are considered a speech act by which a

speaker “fails to engage in an action proposed by the interlocutor” (Chen et

al., 1995:121)

From a sociolinguistic perspective, refusals are important because they are sensitive to social variables such as gender, age, level of education, power, and social distance (Brown and Levinson, 1987; Fraser, 1990; Smith, 1998) Overall, refusals are complicated speech acts that require not only long sequences of negotiation and cooperative achievements, but also “face-saving maneuvers to accommodate the noncompliant nature of the act” (Gass and Houck, 1999:2)

According to Al-Eryani (2007), a refusal is a negative response to an offer, request, and invitation Refusals occur in all languages as all the other speech acts However, not all languages refuse in the same way nor do people feel comfortable when refusing the same invitation or suggestion In many societies, uttering and receiving a message of “no” require special skills The interlocutor must be well aware of how to use the appropriate forms and functions

Refusals are considered to be a face-threatening act among the speech acts “Face” means the public self-image of a person which refers to emotional and social sense of oneself that people have and expect others to recognize Refusals threaten the inviter’s face because they contradict his/her expectations and restrict the inviter’s freedom to perform an act Notably, refusals may threaten the addressee’s public image to maintain approval from others

Because a failure to refuse appropriately can risk the interpersonal relations of the speakers, refusals usually consist of various strategies to avoid offending conversational partners However, it requires a high level of pragmatic competence and the choice of these strategies may vary through languages and cultures For example, in refusing invitations, offers and suggestions, gratitude was regularly expressed by American English speakers, but rarely shown by Egyptian Arabic speakers (Nelson, Al-batal, and Echols, 1996)

A major study carried out by Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss -Weltz (1990) compared the refusals produced by native speakers of Japanese and native speakers of English, using a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) The participants of the study were 20 Japanese speaking Japanese and 20 Americans speaking English with the aim of investigating pr agmatic knowledge in refusals to a higher-, equal-, and lower-status interlocutors Findings showed that, Japanese speakers of English and native speakers differ in three areas: the order of the semantic formula, the frequency of the formula, and the content of the utterances The results also verified the importance of status in selecting the refusal strategies Status was also an important factor to be considered when performing SARs

Genc & Tekyildiz (2009) explored the ways in which Turkish learners of English use the SARs and find out if regional variety affects the kind of refusal strategies used Data of the Turkish EFL participants residing in both rural and urban areas were collected through a DCT in order to investigate the similarities and differences between the use of refusal strategies by Turkish learners of English in urban areas and rural areas as well as native speakers of English in urban areas and rural areas One hundred and one Turkish EFL learners and 50 native speakers of English participated in this study Results showed that subjects in all groups used the refusal strategies in a similar way In addition, the status of interlocutor was observed as an important factor in the choice of strategies for participants All the subjects refused similarly in using direct and indirect strategies in their responses to the interlocutors with different social status

Wannaruk (2008) investigated similarities and distinctions in refusals between American native speakers and Thai speaking English and observed if there was any pragmatic transfer from the first to the second language by Thai EFL learners while making refusals in English All participants are graduate students The data were collected by DCT EFL data for refusals were compared with similar data gathered from American native speakers and Thai Results revealed that generally all groups employed most of the

refusal strategies; however, the pragmatic transfer existed in the choice of refusal strategies

Numerous related studies have been carried out in this pragmatic field In the study by Al-Kahtani (2005), the researcher explored the distinctions in the ways people from different cultural backgrounds performed refusals while using the same linguistic forms in English In addition, Hong (2011) did an empirical study of refusal strategies in Chinese to find out similarities and distinctions in perception and production of refusals by native speakers and nonnative Chinese learners While the study conducted by Felix-Brasdefer (2008) compared refusals in situational variation between the Mexicans and the Dominicans showing that the Mexicans used mostly indirect refusal strategies and mitigation acts whereas the Dominicans applied more direct and unmitigated SARs

2.4 Notions of face

“Face” is not something necessarily shown on someone’s face, nor is it a reference to facial expressions (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Ting -Toomey & Kurogi, 1998) However, face is the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself/ herself by the line others assume he/ she has

taken during a particular contact (Goffman, 1967:5) Face can be lost,

maintained, saved, and protected Fundamentally, the importance of face has been found in almost every culture, yet its meaning and its use differ substantially (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Ting-Toomey, 1988)

“Face” is defined as an individual’s self-esteem It has two aspects, namely the negative and positive face Negative face is “the desire to be unimpeded in one’s actions” and positive face is “the desire to be approved in some respects” (Brown and Levinson, 1987:13) In daily communication especially in a social relationship, it is necessary to keep away from threatening other’s face or in other words to save their face; therefore we employ felicitous strategies in conversations Brown and Levinson pinpointed that politeness is regarded as a face-saving strategy effectively

meeting both the positive and the negative face needs of the interlocutor (Usami, 2002)

2.5 Concepts of face-saving and face-threatening a Face-saving act

A face-saving act that emphasizes a person’s negative face will show concern about imposition and a person’s positive face will show solidarity and draw attention to a common goal (Brown & Levinson, 1987) Therefore, Yule (2006) indicated that understanding how successful communication is actually a process of interpreting not just what speakers say, but what they

“intend to mean” When somebody says ‘Well! I’m really busy’ to refuse an invitation directly, the hearer may feel hurt However, if someone says ‘I

really appreciate it but I have another plan already’ or ‘I’d love to, but I am supposed to finish my report on time’–surely, there is less impact on the

hearer and his self-esteem, or “face” is saved

b Face-threatening act

In daily communication, people may give a threat to another individual’s self-image, or create a “face-threatening act” (FTA) These acts impede the freedom of actions (negative face), and the wish that one’s wants be desired by others (positive face) – by either the speaker, or the addressee, or both The researchers identified three sociological factors that contribute to face threatening acts: the difference in power between speaker and hearer, the social distance between these two parties, and ranking of the obligation in doing face threatening acts (FTA) Yule (2006) argued that if you say something representing a threat to another person’s self-image, it is called a face-threatening act Whenever people say something that lessens the possible threat to another’s face, it can be described as a face-saving act Thus, Yule (1996) discovered that everybody has face wants which are defined as the expectations a person has that his public self-image will be respected

Requests potentially threaten the addressee’s face because they may restrict the addressee’s freedom to act according to his/ her will (Holtgraves,

2002:40) Refusals, on the one hand, may threaten the addressee’s positive face because they may imply that what he/ she says is not favored by the speaker On the other hand, interlocutors attempt to avoid FTAs by using specific strategies to minimize the threat of face to participants

The following figure shows strategies that are chosen when a spe aker does an FTA to a listener The terms invented by Brown and Levinson are “on record” which is when you decide to give utterances directly, and “off record” which is when you choose to use indirect expressions Positive politeness can be defined as what occurs when the speaker tries to protect the hearer’s positive face by decreasing the distance between them Negative politeness is where the speaker tries to preserve the hearer’s negative face by respecting the hearer’s personal zone (Brown and Levinson, 1987:68-71) The relationship between Grice’s cooperative principle and Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory reveals that face plays a pivotal role when it comes to expressing SARSs In order to keep either positive or negative face on FTA, politeness or indirectness strategies may be employed

2.6 Concepts of politeness

In everyday interaction, many expressions have been used for speaking with friends, relatives, officials, and others A different range of expressions was identified with each of them; some with formal tones, some with more formal tones and others with less formal tones People have a talk with politeness and/ or with less politeness Marina Terkourafi (2015) explained that since the speech act of refusal is the most dangerous act to threaten directly the face of those involved in the communication, it is necessary to employ polite refusal semantic formula to reduce and avoid the face threatening to the participants in verbal communication activities to achieve the successful communication

Politeness is the awareness of another person’s face or the public image of a person It is a system of interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interactions and transactions (Lakoff,

self-1990:34) We can think of politeness in general terms as having to do with ideas like being tactful, modest and to be nice to other people (Yule, 2006)

Goffman (1967:77) described politeness as “the appreciation an individual shows to another through avoidance or presentatio n of rituals” Lakoff (1973) suggested that if one desires to succeed in communication, the message must be conveyed in a clear manner Fraser and Nolan (1981) defined politeness as a set of constraints of verbal behavior while Leech (1983) regarded it as forms of behavior aimed at creating and maintaining harmonious interaction He also considers the Politeness Principle as part of the principles for interpersonal rhetoric

In the study of linguistic politeness, the most relevant concept is “face” which is the public self-image in pragmatics This is the emotional and social sense of oneself that everyone has and expects others to recognize According to an investigation by Yule (2006), politeness can be defined as showing awareness of and consideration for another person’s face

It is remarkably challenging to come to a clear definition of politeness Several theorists have tried to offer definitions of politeness The researcher put forward some definitions which had been written by theorists in the linguistic field Arndt and Janney (1985:282) noted that politeness is “interpersonal supportiveness” In another study, Hill et al (1986:349) pointed that politeness is “one of the constraints on human interaction, whose purpose is to consider others’ feelings, establish levels of mutual comfort and promote rapport” Ide (1989:22) presented that politeness is “language associated with smooth communication” Leech (1980:19) showed that politeness is “strategic conflict avoidance” which “can be measured in terms of the degree of effort put into the avoidance of a conflict situation” Particularly, Brown and Levinson (1978) argued that politeness “as a complex system for softening face-threats” Similarly, Mills (2003:6) pointed out that politeness is the expression of the speakers’ intention to mitigate face threats carried by certain face threatening acts toward another

Lakoff (1990) proposes that there are two rules of politeness, which aim at minimizing conflict in an interaction Notably, Brown and Levinson developed a theory of politeness that drew on Goffman’s idea of face and expanded upon Lakoff’s rules of politeness According to Brown and Levinson there are two kinds of face including “negative face” (desire to express one’s ideas without resistance) and “positive face” (desire to have one’s contributions approved of), which reflect two different desires in every interaction (Johnstone, 2008)

Brown and Levinson theorize that “face” must be continually monitored during a conversation because it is vulnerable During a conversation face can be lost, maintained or enhanced It is important to not only maintain one’s own face but also the face of others (Fraser, 1990) Interlocutors must be able to “save face” when they are confronted with FTAs, which threaten the faces of the addressees (Johnstone, 2008)

Brown and Levinson then proposed possible strategies that interlocutors can use to deal with face threatening acts “Politeness Theory” (2011) outlines them as follows

a) Bald On-record politeness: This strategy is used in situations where

people know each other well or in a situation of urgency In these instances maintaining face is not the first priority or main goal of a conversation

b) Off-record: This strategy is more indirect The speaker does not

impose on the hearer As a result, face is not directly threatened This strategy often requires the hearer to interpret what the speaker is saying

c) Positive Politeness: This strategy tries to minimize the threat to the

audience’s positive face This can be done by attending to the audience’s needs, invoking equality and feelings of belonging to the group, hedging or indirectness, avoiding disagreement, using humor and optimism and making offers and promises

d) Negative Politeness: This strategy tries to minimize threats to the

audience’s negative face This can be done by being indirect, using hedges or questions, minimizing imposition and apologizing

Vietnam is greatly influenced by Chinese culture, French civilization, Buddhist philosophy, Christianity and Communism, as well as the ong oing globalization process (Dao, 2000; Tran, 1998; Jamieson, 1991) However, traditional Vietnamese culture is still preserved while accumulating and localizing foreign cultural influences (Ngo, 2001; Tran, 1998) In modern times, politeness has been well maintained by Vietnamese people They have gained knowledge of additional politeness strategies through interaction with foreign friends In social interaction, the Vietnamese value “tinh” (Tran, 1998; Tran, 2001; Le, 2001; Ngo, 2001; Truong, 2001), which is literally translated into English as “love” It implies that people should act on the ground of morality than reasonability Everyday lifestyle and interpersonal skills should be based on this value In former times, politeness was considered more important than education Students were

taught tien hoc le, hau hoc van, or “behave oneself before studying” (tien: first, hoc: study, le: good manners, hau: later, hoc: study, van: knowledge)

(Luu, 2004)

Vietnamese society is no longer as agriculturally dominated as it once was (Do, 2002) It has become industrialized and is subject to increasing globalization A large percentage of the population has to conform to the norms and patterns of industrial life, with changing lifestyles and ways of thinking However, there are many innate characteristics that Vietnamese people still observe in their daily life One of those unchanged manner is indirectness The Vietnamese seldom use a direct approach in their expressions Obviously, directness is appreciated in the Western world, but not in Vietnam (Crawford, 1966) With regard to politeness strategies in refusals, Vietnamese have some social norms that require language users to be able to refuse in a polite manner When resorting to different ways of refusing, they tend to be indirect for face-saving strategies This study aims to discuss this phenomenon in Vietnamese context

2.7 Concepts of indirectness and indirectness for refusals

Searle (1975) proposed the notion of “indirect speech acts” This notion is applied to speech acts in which the speaker communicates to the conversational partner more than transferring an own message by relying on their common cultural background such as requesting, refusing, and apologizing

According to Cohen (1996:265), a semantic formula refers to “a word, phrase, or sentence that meets a particular semantic criterion or strategy; any one or more of these can be used to perform the act in question” For instance, in the situation in which the respondents had to refuse a request from a classmate asking to borrow the note of a missed class, the participants gave responses such as “Sorry, I need to read it tonight” which were coded as an SAR showing regret and excuse In another situation in which the respondents were offered a piece of cake by a friend, the participants gave responses such as “Thank you so much, I have eaten like a pig” which were coded as an SAR expressing gratitude and joke

Thomas (1995:119) claimed that indirectness refers to a speech act in which the expressed meaning of an utterance does not match the speaker’s implied or intended meaning An indirect SAR requires the speaker’s and the listener’s shared background information and the ability to make inferences on the listener’s part Additionally, Brown and Levinson (1987) defined indirectness as a set of politeness strategies which can be used to minimize imposition on the hearer and to foster harmony between the speaker and the conversational partner All in all, politeness and indirectness are of the close relationship in supporting effective communication

Similarly, Blum-Kulka (1987:140) also claimed there is a relationship between politeness and indirectness in general, irrespective of language As a communication style, indirectness is identified in everyday interaction In some situations, it is employed as a more effective way of communication For instance, it can be used to perform different expressions such as giving hints, avoiding confrontation, joking, being ironic, or

particularly showing politeness by saving the face of either speaker In many cultures, especially in Asian cultures, indirectness is valued because saving face and harmony in social relationships are highly valued (Lakoff, 1973)

In our daily communication, people always want to establish close rapports with others, avoid embarrassment, misunderstanding, and maintain interpersonal and social harmony So, appropriate expressions and behaviors in all communicative situations are supposed to be the most significant rule in interpersonal communication For this concern, communicators always draw on various communicative skills that the use of indirectness is greatly appreciated People tend to use some indirect strategies to mitigate the force of their unpleasant speech acts in order to avoid embarrassment, or conflict so as to make the conversation go on smoothly, and also maintain a harmonious relationship (Fachun Zhang & Hua You, 2009)

As a strategy in communication to achieve a certain goal, indirectness is not only commonly employed in oral communication, but also in non-verbal communication Indirectness is a broad term, which can have a variety of facets and can underlie phenomena such as irony, metaphor, and

understatement Notably, Tannen (1986) pointed out numerous benefits of

indirectness namely establishing rapport, self-defense, avoiding confrontation, and gleaning aesthetic pleasure through the use of joking, irony, and figures of speech She claimed that indirectness is beneficial because it maintains a balance between the need between the speaker and the hearer In addition, Thomas (1995:143) listed a variety of reasons “for the universal use of indirectness” namely the desire to make one’s language more or less interesting; the desire to increase the force of one’s message; competing goals; and politeness or regard for face

“Face” is a sacred thing for every human being, it is an essential factor that communicators all have to pay close attention If one wants his/ her face cared for, he/ she should care for other people’s face (Goffman, 1959) So, people try to protect the face of others, and at the same time save their own If one does not want to lose his/ her face, the safest way is not to damage the

face of others Indirectness is a way to show politeness to others and it is used in various speech acts, such as request, invitation, etc in the event the possible refusals or conflicts occur

By being indirect, the speaker is making it less obvious that he/ she expects the hearer to comply This provides greater freedom for the hearer to refuse Even if the hearer refuses, he/ she will use polite language in order not to cause embarrassment to the requester However, if the requester asks in a direct manner with the imperative form, it then seems to be an order from the speaker It sounds to be a face-threatening act Then, it may cause antipathy in the requested person towards the speaker As a result, the requester will certainly get embarrassed and feel his/ her face lost on hearing this

When refusing other people’s requests, it should be very careful about expressions, avoiding using direct forms of refusal In this case, one common strategy of language use is not to give out any explicit expressions of refusal but to show the reasons for it This is an indirect way to express meaning in order to save the face of both sides, and avoid embarrassment

2.8 SARs realization

“Refusal” means the speech act of saying “no” (Wierzbicka, 1987:94), it expresses the addressee’s non-acceptance, declines of or disagrees with a request, invitation, suggestion or offer In other words, refusing means saying “No, I will not do it” in response to someone else’s utterance, in which he/ she shows that he/ she wants us to do something and that he/ she expects us to do it The FTA leads to a tendency that the speakers attempt to make use of certain strategies such as indirectness and polite expressions in order to avoid conflict (Brown and Levinson, 1987) Thus, the SAR realization is “a major cross-cultural sticking point for many non-native speakers” (Beebe et al., 1990:56)

In terms of pragmatics, requests and refusals are automatic sequences in the structure of the conversation which are called “adjacency pairs” “Adjacency pairs” is the term used for certain consecutive speech turns that

are closely related (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973) They can be described as automatic sequences consisting of a first part and a second part produced by two successive speakers so that the second utterance is identified as related to the first as an expected follow-up The most common adjacency pairs are greeting-greeting, thanking-response, request-refusal/acceptance, apology-acceptance, and question-answer Managing adjacency pairs successfully is part of conversational competence

The present research focuses here on the adjacency pairs of refusal, and request-refusal They are important adjacency pairs and therefore demand special attention from the speakers so that the message can be conveyed in a socially acceptable manner In everyday life, it is not easy to refuse If you give a flat refusal, it may be interpreted as more than just the refusal itself In contrast, it can create a feeling of discomfort in both the speaker and conversational partner

invitation-There have also been studies of refusals in intercultural and native contexts In the study of the indigenous population and the non-native (Korean, Malaysian, Chinese, Arabic, Thai, Japanese, and Spanish) rejections from academic advising sessions, Hartford and Bardovi-Harlig (1992) found that explanation was used most commonly for rejections by both native and non-native students However, non-native speakers tend to use more avoidance strategies than natives Ikoma and Shimura (1994) carried out a study with English as L1 and Japanese as L2 They attempted to investigate pragmatic transfers in the speech act of refusal by American learners of Japanese as a second language They found that there were not any distinctions between American and Japanese subjects in terms of specificity in excuses Moreover, Japanese subjects were found not to use more formal-sounding expressions than American subjects On the other hand, Beckers (1999) found that Americans varied their refusal strategies according to social status (high, low, equal) rather than social distance (stranger, acquaintance, and intimate), while Germans varied their refusal strategies according to social distance, rather than social status Germans

non-also employed fewer semantic formulae than Americans did in all 18 situations (which are the combinations of the three variables of social distance, social status, and gender) Felix-Brasdefer (2003) investigated the speech act performance of native speakers of Mexican Spanish, native speakers of American English, and advanced learners of Spanish as a foreign language in refusals The author provided six different situations (two invitations, two requests, and two suggestions) of equal and high status using role plays and verbal reports Findings show that learners differed from the native groups in the frequency, content, and perceptions of refusal strategies

A study of socio-cultural transfer and its motivating factors within the realization patterns of the SARs generated by Jordanian EFL learners was carried out by Al-Issa (2003) The data were collected using a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) It was then followed by semi-structured interviews Using semantic formulae as the major analysis approach Refusal responses were compared with similar data acquired from native speakers of English responding in English and native speakers of Arabic responding in Arabic The results indicated that socio-cultural transfer made a profound impact on the EFL learners’ selection of semantic formulae, the length of their responses, and the content of the semantic formulae

Research on the Vietnamese SARs includes a study on some cultural distinctions in refusing a request in English and in Vietnamese Phan (2001) stated that both English and Vietnamese tend to use more indirect SARs than direct ones Comparing the degree of directness and indirectness of refusals expressed by English and Vietnamese subjects, all the English-speaking respondents are more direct than the Vietnamese ones

cross-2.9 Classification of refusal strategies

This study follows the theories of Beebe et al (1990)’s through the adaptation of his classification on refusal responses The following is a modified version of the classification used by Beebe et al (1990) Strategies

which are not identified in the collected data were omitted from Beebe et al.’s classification scheme

II Indirect strategies

3 Regret - (e.g., “I’m very sorry”)

4 Explanation (e.g., “I want to leave now because of some personal problems”)

5 Future acceptance (e.g., “I will help you tomorrow after the final exam”)

6 Principle (e.g., “I don’t like lazy students who rarely prepare the lessons”)

7 Philosophy (e.g., “Excuse is worse than sin”)

8 Self-defense (e.g., “You should have attended classes”) 9 Criticism

10 Attack

III Adjuncts to Refusals

11 Positive Opinion (e.g., “Congratulations on your promotion I am very glad!”)

12 Gratitude (e.g., “Thanks for the invitation”) 13 Agreement (e.g., “Yes, I agree, but …”)

Although the literature on refusals is abundant, most aforementioned studies were conducted to compare refusals on situational variation; find out similarities and differences in perception and production of refusals; explore the differences in the ways people from different cultural backgrounds perform refusals; investigate if there is any pragmatic transfer from the first to the second language while making refusals; identify if regional variety

affects the kind of refusal strategies used Moreover, investigations i nto the SARs have been limited Some significant studies have been conducted on western and eastern languages such as Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss -Weltz (1990), Chen (1996), (Fe´lix-Brasdefer, 2006) and (Geyang, 2007) but the aim of these studies was to find evidence of pragmatic transfer in the order, frequency, and content of semantic formulas used in refusals only

In addition, there are a variety of studies conducted by numerous researchers in term of speech acts in general and SARs in particular namely Blum-Kulka and House (1989); House and Kasper (1987); Ellis, R (1992); Garcia, C (1993); Hassall, T J (2001); Jeremy F Jones and Adrefiza (2017); and Lana Kreishan (2018) that focused on the polite speech acts of apology and request whereas the other scholars, such as Murphy & Neu (1996); Tanck, Sharyl (2004) investigated between the complaints and refusals One study carried out by Allami, et al (2017) which examined the different levels of employing the strategies related to request, apology, and refusal In recent years, many researchers have thought about identifying the refusal strategies in their own languages, cultures and English learning process Nhat, D B (2018) explored strategies of positive politeness in inviting and declining invitations in Vietnamese context Hatime Çiftç (2016) implemented a contrastive analysis on the use of politeness strategies in making SARs between Turkish and English native speakers Paraskevi -Lukeriya L Iliadi and Tatiana V Larina (2017) explored SARs and the employment of refusal strategies in English and Russian Tuncer, Hülya (2016) and Tuncer, et al (2019) found in their research that the refusal strategies used in social activities are influenced by gender distinctions and the social status in Turkey

Furthermore, there are still a large number of researchers in the world expressing their interest in the speech acts and refusals Pei Lixia (2010) investigated difference of the refusal strategies between English majors, non-English majors and native English speakers Guo Yinling (2012) made a contrastive analysis on the similarities and differences in the use of

strategies in English and Chinese refusal speech acts from the perspective of pragmatics Her research shows that the participants in communicative activities with different social status will adopt different refusal strategies Wang (2018) analyzed the polite strategies in the media to avoid the face threatening based on Goffman’s face work (Goffman, 1955) and Brown & Levinson’s face saving theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987)

The previous studies demonstrated the fact that EFL learners have found it challenging to master authentic English owing to the lack of real English environment for learning and applying to actual communication contexts Even though students with good English skills are capable of communicating with people who use English as their native language, there exist various communication obstacles, which is not mainly due to the students’ poor spoken English performance The speech act employment is related to the weak pragmatic competence of EFL learners, so it is very important to improve students’ pragmatic communicative competence

More importantly, it is obvious that no systematic study has been done to find out face-saving strategies in SARs of Vietnamese EFL learners and distinctions related to gender in their refusal strategy choices for the purpose of saving conversational partners’ face has not been thoroughly discovered in Vietnamese contexts And it is supposed to be a research gap in term of pragmatics which should be further investigated Therefore, this current research is intended to fill this gap in the literature

In order to address the limitations of previous studies, this research examines the specific face-saving strategies while performing SARs and finds out if there may be possible gender distinctions in refusal strategy choices of Vietnamese EFL learners Within the framework based on semantic formula and categorized according to the classification of refusal strategies by Beebe et al (1990), the researcher looks forward to identifying the important findings

Summary

The aforementioned research has provided some preliminary background and framework, in descriptive and methodological senses for the study of refusal face-saving strategies in the present study However, two particular gaps in the study of pragmatics on face-saving strategies are important to be noted because this research contributes and compliments them While the study of pragmatics in foreign and second language learners has been productive in recent years which can be clearly witnessed from the research reported above, yet none has focused on refusal face-saving strategies employed by Vietnamese EFL learners in general and gender distinctions in face-saving strategies choices in particular in terms of pragmatics in Vietnamese contexts

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 3.1 Introduction

As Chapter 2 clearly indicates there is a gap in understanding of how students apply the use of refusal patterns and how face-saving strategies affect their use of refusal speech acts in contact with other speakers of English The research investigates the face-saving strategies possibly employed for refusal utterances by both gender groups In addition, the current study determines the extent of gender distinctions in face-saving strategies for SARs made by EFL students at TDMU

The literature review shows numerous studies and articles that deal with face-saving strategies and refusal acts in a variety of aspects Chapter 2 shows that more in-depth investigation of refusal face-saving strategies is needed, as there were very few research projects conducted on Vietnamese students The research also enriches the literature and provides respondents’ insight on this particular issue Therefore, the study looks at TDMU students’ attitudes and awareness on this issue in order to investigate students’ perceptions from their practice

This chapter presents an overview of the methodology used in this study With the purpose of answering the research questions posed at the end of Chapter 1, data were collected from participants on their production of refusal acts Beginning with a description of the subjects used in the study, the chapter then presents the data collection instruments used and the reasons why those instruments were chosen over others The procedures for collecting each type of data, a description of the transcription procedures or methods along with ethical issues are detailed Then, a framework for data analysis is introduced with a coding classification for refusal acts, followed by the discussion of a framework for assessing reliability The information is the foundation of the study in order to compare the gender distinctions in face-saving strategies for refusal acts with accuracy The researcher used Discourse Completion Task (DCT) as the main data collection method This study employed the quantitative approach

3.2 Research design and data gathering instruments

Research without a theoretical framework is a description and does not qualify as academic research or as a contribution to knowledge (Boden, Kenway, & Epstein, 2005) As the research plans to examine in depth TDMU students’ perceptions and refusal strategies choices, so the researcher chose to carry out a quantitative study under the assumption that this approach will help to yield considerable data and reliable findings The results are going to be presented in quantitative form to record the frequency of occurrence of SARs This analysis process hopefully serves the research best and allows the researcher to gain in-depth insights into the investigated aspects and to measure the SAR frequencies more thoroughly and gather a large amount of information about the topic

3.3 The research site and the population for the present study

The research took place at TDMU The university is located in Binh Duong province and it is a public university under the management of the People’s Committee of Binh Duong province It offers training programs in multiple disciplines including 28 university degree programs and nine

postgraduate programs TDMU is the only pedagogical university in Binh

Duong Province

The questionnaire was constructed and distributed to 120 students (60 males and 60 females) from different backgrounds at TDMU including freshman, sophomore, junior, senior and part-time students All participants are English majors They all learn English for various purposes such as work, study, and promotion Some students live in the city or towns nearby and others come from other parts of the country Ages of the par ticipants range from 18 to 26 years old and older

3.4 Data collection procedures

The data collection took the researcher approximately four months to conduct the survey The researcher started looking for participants in TDMU and visiting different classes Then, participants were provided with details about the current study, including its purposes and aims, and asked if they

would be interested in participating in this project Moreover, participants were made aware that their participation was voluntary and they had the right to quit at any time without any pressure

In order to collect data, the data collection instrument used in the present study was the Discourse Completion Task (DCT) The questionnaire was designed in DCT, a form of questionnaire depicting some actual situations to which the respondents are expected to react and perform SARs in details on their own as spontaneously as possible The DCT was chosen in this study as it is easily modified in order to focus on specific variables such as the types of scenarios Moreover, the DCT using written questionnaire is appropriate for the purpose of this study because it has some specific advantages Wolfson, Marmor and Jones (1989) described the use of the DCT as an effective means of gathering a large number of data in a relatively short period A large number of participants can be surveyed with the DCT more easily than role plays, thus making statistical analysis more feasible Within the time constraints of the present study, this methodology

worked well

The questionnaire was distributed to 120 participants (60 males and 60 females), they were asked to fill out the items in the questionnaire and their responses were used in further analysis The questionnaire includes 10 different refusal situations in daily life in which a person poses a question (invitation or request) to another person Participants are supposed to place themselves in the respondent’s position and imagine what they would say in each situation In the space provided they would then write down exactly the way they would refuse such typical situations They should include pauses or hesitating expressions if that is the way they would respond to the

question

The invitations or requests in the questionnaire are not to be accepted but refused in all situations because the researcher mainly concentrated on how EFL learners perform SARs Participants are asked to answer every situation which consists of five invitations (situations 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) and