Refusal in English communication: Tactics of privacy protection

The article deals with the refusal in English communication from the perspective of pragmalinguistics. In the introduction the author justifies the relevance of the chosen topic, indicates the material and methods and formulates a hypothesis. The object of study is utterances conveying refusal which function as a means of protecting private space. The aim of the research is to reveal the communicative tactics of refusal which provide the protection of private space as well as the linguistic means of their implementation. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the analysis of refusal as a means of privacy protection and specification of its functioning in English communication. In the main part of the article a review of existing research on the topic is given and the key terms of the research such as “communicative distance”, “privacy”, “communicative tactics”, and “refusal” are defined. The author describes types of refusal, the main characteristics and communicative situations in which refusal is realized. As the result of the research, a typology of pramalinguistic pairs has been developed: offer – refusal, invitation – refusal, request – refusal, advice – refusal, information request – refusal. The main tactics of refusal which are common for each pramalinguistic pair were identified. Language means implementing these refusal tactics were revealed. The author concludes that refusal allows to regulate access to private information and set boundaries in communication. The conclusion summarizes the findings, highlights the role of refusal in English communication, and suggests perspectives for further research. The application of the research results includes lectures on general linguistics, specialized courses on pragmalinguistics, specialized courses on discourse analysis and text interpretation, as well as practical courses of English as a foreign language.