%0 Journal Article
%T A Comparative Study of Refusal Speech Acts in Chinese and American English
%A Hong-lin LI
%J Canadian Social Science
%D 2007
%I Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture
%X Refusals are frequently performed in our daily lives, and the speech act of refusals is one significant research topic in Pragmatics. Based on the speech act theory of Austin (1962) and Searle (1969), with the theoretical frame of the politeness theory put forward by Brown and Levinson, This paper presents a comparative study of speech acts of refusal in Chinese and American English (AE). The results show that refusals vary in directness with situations and cultures, just like other speech acts, yet there are some similarities between Chinese and AE. On the one hand, both languages employ the three directness types, namely the direct refusal speech act, ability of negation and indirect refusal speech act, and prefer indirect refusals. The situational variability of directness in both languages follows a similar trend. On the other hand, Americans are more direct than Chinese and Chinese sincere refusals are considered as face-threatening acts, which call for politeness strategies to minimize the negative effects on the addressee(s). Furthermore, Chinese shows the lower degree of situational variation in the use of the three directness types. From all these evidence, we maintain that the cross-linguistic differences are due to basic differences in cultural values, i.e., Americans value individualism and equality, while Chinese value collectivism and social hierarchy. Key words: Refusal Speech Act, Chinese-American, Comparison, Cultural Values R¨¦sum¨¦: Dans la vie quotidienne, il nous arrive souvent de refuser les autres. Les actes de discours de refus est aussi une probl¨¦matique importante dans les recherches de la pragmatique. Selon la th¨¦orie des actes de discours d¡¯Austin et de Searle ainsi que le principe de politesse de Brown et de Levinson, l¡¯article pr¨¦sent ex¨¦cute une ¨¦tude comparative des actes de discours de refus des Chinois et des Am¨¦ricains. Il existe des points communs entre eux, par exemple, les m¨ºmes caract¨¦ristiques des actes de refus : l¡¯utilisation des trois ordres directs dans les actes de discours, ¨¤ savoir, actes de discours de refus direct, capacit¨¦ de refus et actes de disours de refus indirect ; la pr¨¦f¨¦rence pour les actes de refus indirect ; la tendance d¡¯ali¨¦nation semblable du contexte. Mais il se trouve aussi des diff¨¦rences sous l¡¯influence de la culture. Les Am¨¦ricains sont plus directs que les Chinois dans les actes de refus. Les Chinois s¡¯efforcent de miniment l¡¯impact n¨¦gatif des actes de refus sur l¡¯interlocuteur en utilisant des strat¨¦gies de politess, parce que, d¡¯apr¨¨s eux, le refus direct blessent la face de l¡¯autre
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