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