Refusing gifts in Chinese: a linguistic analysis integrating interaction ritual, expressions and speech acts

Abstract In this study, we examine patterns of gift-refusing in Chinese. Exchanging gifts is a fundamental part of Chinese social interaction which follows ostensible ritual conventions: a gift is often expected to be refused before it can be accepted. We focus on conventionalised expressions through which speech acts realising genuine gift-refusing are indicated. Such expressions have an important interactional function because Chinese ritual gift-exchanges trigger ostensible aggression: the participants engage in persuasion-dissuasion game to accept/refuse the gift. We adopt a multimethod approach. We first interview Chinese speakers about their perceptions of the use of gift-refusing expressions. We then use DCTs featuring gift-accepting, genuine- and ostensible gift-refusing. These DCTs allowed us to identify expressions with a strong gift-refusing-indicating capacity. Finally, we examine the use of these expressions in a corpus of WeChat gift-refusing exchanges. Our results show that gift-refusing expressions do exist in Chinese, but their interactional effectiveness is often decreased by ostensible aggression.