A Contrastive Study of Refusal Strategies between English and Chinese英语毕业论文.doc

A Contrastive Study of Refusal Strategies between English and ChineseAcknowledgementsI am grateful to Professor Zhu Yue, who has admitted me to his “211” Research Project of the contrastive studies of English and Chinese, which has initiated me to set this field as my topic for the postgraduate paper. His originative ideas and constant encouragement have helped me a lot throughout my writing of this paper. I show my sincerest thanks to him.In addition, I have benefited enormously from the lectures, which I have attended during the past three years of my postgraduate study. These lectures are from Professor Chen Zhengfa, Professor Hong Zengliu, Professor Hu Jian, Professor Hua Quankun, Professor Tian Debei, Professor Wang Xiaoling, Professor Zhang Ming, Professor Zhou Fangzhu and Dr. Zhu Xiaomei. Their lively and enlightening lectures have enriched my knowledge in literature, translation, lexicology, western religion, critique writing, cross-cultural communication and pedagogy.Thanks also go to Professor Jill Jewell from America, who has given us lectures on British literature. She has helped me a lot in designing the English questionnaires for this paper.I would also like to thank all those people who have spared their time and efforts to fill in my questionnaires and some of them have even offered me very valuable advice on improving the questionnaires.Finally, I want to extend my gratitude to my classmates for their kind help not only in my studies but also in my everyday life. Their friendship and encouragement will always be cherished in my heart.AbstractThis paper is a contrastive study of refusal strategies mainly between English and Chinese, which involves the cross-cultural study of English and Chinese as well as cross-register study from interpersonal communications to shopping activities.The paper has been based on the following two basic hypotheses: (1) The Chinese culture is generally believed to be collectively oriented while the American individually oriented. The two societies are different and therefore it is hypothesized that the discourse realization patterns of refusal strategies might vary from one country to another, although the role and nature of the speech act of refusing might be universally similar. (2) Registers are language varieties appropriate for use in particular speech situations, which are concerned with the addressers and the addressees relationships to the discourse field, mode and tenor. Since the register of shopping activities is different from that of interpersonal communications, it is hypothesized that the discourse realization patterns of refusal strategies might vary from one register to another.The paper has been divided into four chapters. Chapter one serves as a general review of the theory of contrastive study and the findings of contrastive study of refusal strategies in interpersonal communications drawn by the scholars both at home and abroad. It is hoped that this review provides the background for the contrastive analysis of refusal strategies in shopping activities. Chapter two focuses on the relevant cross-cultural-register analysis after presenting the goals, the subjects, the designing of questionnaires and the methods for data collection in shopping activities. Chapter three is to take into consideration the theoretical discussion of refusal perception, production, interpretation and reducibility. Chapter four summarizes the key points of the whole paper.The findings drawn from interpersonal communications indicate that the Chinese tend to use the politeness refusal strategy of “marginally touching the point” because they are more economical in their choices of the number of the tokens of the refusal strategies so that they could restore relationship with people. One polite mode of refusing is “address term + apology + reasons”. The Americans tend to use a “question attentiveness” strategy. They try to employ different refusal strategies in order that the problems in question could be solved. One polite mode of refusing is “ I would like to + reasons + apology”.The findings also indicate that cooperation and politeness are what people in both cultures are concerned about, because to satisfy others faces is to save your own face. However, none of the social situations is completely cooperative, and social situations, in essence, involve some degree of tension between cooperation and antagonism. The register of shopping activities is different from that of interpersonal communications. In the former, people seem to care more about the interests of earning or losing brought about by the goods-money exchanges than the public faces. They usually do not tend to sacrifice their interests to satisfy others faces, so they are more economical of and direct in making refusals to others. The study shows that in shopping activities the Chinese tend to employ the mode of “prefaces + phony approval + reasons”, while the Americans would like to use the mode of “prefaces / no + thanks + reasons”. Moreover, the Chinese tend to use the objective reasons such as goods-oriented or attendants-oriented reasons, while the Americans the subjective reasons such as customers-oriented reasons.This paper might be of some help to further the theoretical researches in literature in the speech act of refusing, as well as to test the refusal hypotheses drawn from interpersonal communications in shopping activities. The originality of this paper lies in its cross-register study of interpersonal communications and shopping activities, besides the cross-cultural study of English and Chinese. It is a pity that the subjects have not included as many individual varieties as possible and it is also hoped that this contrastive study of refusal strategies in shopping activities can be furthered in other languages besides English and Chinese.Key words: contrastive study, interpersonal communications, shopping activities,refusing, strategy, speech act.摘 要本论文对英汉拒绝言语语用策略进行了对比研究，文中不仅涉及英汉语言文化对比，也涉及跨语域对比，即私人交往拒绝言语与商业购物拒绝言语的对比。本文语用对比研究以以下两个假设为前提：一、尽管拒绝言语所实施的“拒绝”作用和“拒绝”功能是相似的，由于中美语言文化存在差异，如中国人注重集体，美国人看中个体，因而拒绝言语策略话语实现形式应呈现语言文化差异。 二、语域是适应一定交际情景的语言变体。语域变体与交际双方所涉及的特定交际场合、交际模式、交际意图等因素密切相关。商业购物活动不同于私人交往，因此拒绝言语策略话语实现形式应呈现语域差异。全文共分四章。第一章介绍了对比研究理论的历史及发展，并对国内外主要学者在私人交往中总结出的英汉（日）拒绝策略进行概述，为本论文商业购物英汉拒绝言语对比研究奠定基础。第二章讨论了商业购物拒绝言语策略对比研究项目的目标、调查对象、问卷调查设计及数据的采集和分析，并重点进行跨文化、跨语域的相关对比分析。第三章从总体上对拒绝言语行为的感知、生产、阐釋和归属进行理论探讨。第四章对论文中心要点进行了总结。拒绝言语的对比研究目前大多局限在私人交往语域中，国内外学者认为中国人拒绝时使用的拒绝策略比较节省，采用“点到为止”策略，以维护人际关系。采用的一般模式是称呼语加道歉语加拒绝理由。美国人则使用“问题关注”策略，可以自由地使用多种策略，重在解决问题。他们常以表示“愿意”的虚拟式开头，然后说明拒绝理由，最后表示道歉。拒绝言语研究表明：人们在社会交往中为维护自身的公共面子，一般是愿意遵循合作原则和礼貌原则，因为照顾别人的面子就是给自己面子。但在实质上，社会交往涉及合作和对抗间的一种动态磨合。商业购物活动不同于私人交往，人们对“钱物交换”所带来的“惠”、“损”利益更加关注，因此在拒绝言语策略的话语表现上会更节省更直接，一般不会牺牲自己的钱物来照顾别人的面子。中国人习惯使用“暗示语 假赞同 拒绝理由”模式，而美国人则用 “（暗示语）不 + 谢谢 + 拒绝理由”； 中国人更多使用以商品、售货员为中心的客观理由，而美国人则更多表达顾客自己不满意的主观理由。本论文研究有助于深化和丰富目前拒绝言语对比研究的理论及其逻辑实证调查。它的创新之处在于该论文不仅对前人在私人交往中总结出的拒绝假设在商业购物活动中进行跨语言文化论证，而且对私人交往和商业购物中的拒绝言语进行跨语域对比，总结了商业购物活动中中美惯用的拒绝模式及其策略。该论文的不足之处在于中英测试对象不可能囊括方方面面的个体，中英商业拒绝言语总结出的拒绝模式及其策略还有待于在英汉等其它语言中得到进一步的调查和探索。关键字：对比研究、私人交往、商业购物、拒绝、策略、言语行为。Chapter One: Literary Review of Contrastive Study inInterpersonal Communications1.1 Theory of Contrastive StudyThere are two classical approaches to the understanding of the world. One classical approach is to categorize the world. It is classical because it goes back to the ancient Greece as well as it has dominated psychology, philosophy, and linguistics throughout much of the twentieth century. As is well known, Aristotle distinguishes between the essence of a thing and its accidents. He believes that essence is what makes a thing as it is. He defines essence as “all parts immanent in things that define and indicate their individuality, and whose destruction causes the destruction of the whole” (Metaphysics 5.8.3). Accidents are incidental properties, which play no part in determining what a thing is. Accident, as he defines, is “that which applies to something and is truly stated, but neither necessarily nor usually” (Metaphysics 5.30.1). To take one of Aristotles examples: the essence of man is “two-footed animal”. That a man might be white, or cultured is accidental because these attributes might be true of an individual, but they are irrelevant in determining whether an entity is indeed a man.However, many of the inadequacies of the classical theory of categorization have been anticipated by Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations. First of all, the various members of a category do not share a set of common properties on whose basis one member can be clearly distinguished from the other. Secondly, the boundary of the category is fuzzy, and the category is not structured in terms of shared criterion features, but rather by a crisscrossing network of similarities and differences. Some members share some of these attributes, while other members share other attributes. Yet, there are no attributes common to all the members, or to them alone. It may even be the case that some members have practically nothing in common with others. When we look at a thing, we see a complicated network of overlapping and crisscrossing similarities and differences. So an alternative classical approach to understanding the world is to contrast things, to make one thing distinct from another by drawing their similarities and differences, since all things and persons exist in relation to each other.There is no exception to language. If the basic task of linguistics is to interpret language phenomena, then any branch of linguistics is to make a contrastive study of the basic concepts, theories, models and methods applicable in its own linguistic branch. Language is a complicated entity with multiple layers and facets, so it is impossible to just concentrate on only one aspect of it at a time. Such branches as phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, socio-linguistics, psycholinguistics and applied linguistics are to study languages from different perspectives, however, the study of any branch can only be carried on in relation to others, which is called “contrastive study” or “contrastive linguistics”.Contrastive study can be done synchronically or diachronically, as the Swiss linguist Saussure (1916/1980:119) has stated. Language exists in time and changes through time. The description of a language at a certain point in time is a synchronic study; the description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study. In modern linguistics, synchronic study seems to enjoy priority over diachronic study, because it is difficult to describe the changes that have taken place in historical development unless various states of a language are successfully studied. Synchronic descriptions are often thought of as descriptions of a language as it exists at the present day and most linguistic studies are of this type. In the meanwhile, both synchronic study and diachronic study on languages can be done between languages or within one language.Contrastive study has been popular in China, ever since it was considered as a useful approach to language studies in the early 19th century. Some older Chinese scholars such as 赵元任 and 吕叔湘 have once propounded making contrastive studies of Chinese, English and other foreign languages. Professor Zhao published the paper A Preliminary Study of English Intonation and Its Chinese Equivalents in 1933. Professor L?/FONT> (cited from许余龙, 2002: 12) also stated in 1942 that it was only through contrasts that we could know similarities and differences between languages. Since then, some Chinese scholars have been absorbed in diachronic studies of language development, such as the etymological study of the Chinese characters. Some Chinese grammarians have made a synchronic study of languages by classifying the Chinese characters and English words into several kinds of parts of speech or sentence patterns to describe languages more systematically. Works and papers on contrastive studies of English and Chinese have therefore sprung out enormously since the 80s. The representative works include何自然（1988）， 杨自检、李瑞华(1990), 赵世开 (1999), 柯平(1999), 杨自检 (2000) and 许余龙 (2002). Mr. Xu (2002:4) defines contrastive linguistics to be “a branch of linguistics, whose task is to make synchronic comparisons between two or even more languages. It is expected to describe the similarities and differences between languages, especially the differences.”Contrastive study has also enjoyed a long history in the west. There are two sources of it: one is from Europe in the 50s, where the contrastive study is firstly made in Russia and then is carried on by the Prague School; the other is from America, where the term of “contrastive linguistics” is put forward by Sapir Whorf in 1941. Sapir and Whorf adopt the approach of contrastive study to interpret the relationship between language and culture, which has later become the famous hypothesis of “linguistic determinism” and “linguistic relativism”. Since then, contrastive study has developed greatly both in theory and application. In 1973, the first international magazine on contrastive study was issued in Poland called Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics and the second called Contrastes was issued in Bulgaria and France. Likewise, contrastive study has also been carried on in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Egypt.Contrastive study has presented some new trends since the early beginning of the 80th century. Firstly, theoretical researches on it have been enriched, which have been devoted to exploring the causes of the similarities and differences between languages from perspectives of language intra-structures, language typology, language evolution and cognitive thought model; secondly, applied contrastive study focuses on foreign language acquisition, error analysis, and inter-language studies, which contribute much to the foreign language teaching, translation and bilingual lexicography; thirdly, the scope of contrastive study has been extended from traditional scopes of phonetics, lexicology and grammar to discourse analysis and pragmatics, interwoven with the macro-study of society and culture; fourthly, in terms of the methodology, people are more likely to do quantitative analysis, or to combine methods of quantitative and qualitative analyses; lastly, people are beginning to carry on researches on theory and methodology of contrastive study themselves.1.2 Literary Review of Contrastive Study of Refusal Strategies in Interpersonal CommunicationsContrastive studies of refusal strategies carried out by the scholars both at home and abroad have mainly been limited to the register of interpersonal communications, and the subjects