Understanding Refusal Style and Pragmatic Competence of Teenage Cantonese English Learners in Refusals: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

The paper investigates the refusal style of teenage Cantonese learners of English in terms of strategy use, pattern, order and content of refusals’ semantic formulae quantitative and qualitatively, and discusses their pragmatic competence and refusal style with reference to that of adult native Mandarin Chinese (L1) speakers’ and Chinese English learners reported in the literature. One hundred and fifty-six Cantonese English learners aged between 14 and 18, studying in Form 2, Form 4 and Form 6 participated in the study. Refusals to requests were collected using five closed role plays in which sociolinguistic variables were controlled. It was found that three indirect refusal patterns were generally used by the three age groups across situations, with the strategy of giving a specific reason being dominant. Only the difference in use of single strategy was statistically significant (p<.05). The frequency rate of refusing directly decreased when age and language learning exposure increased. The older teenage learners refused more indirectly than the young ones. The indirect-with-specific-reason refusal style to requests is consistent with the indirect Chinese communication style of adult native Chinese and Chinese English learners. In addition, the direct-then-indirect development in L2 refusals is similar to that in L2 requests and complaints expressed by young Cantonese English learners, and there are some signs of L1 pragmatic transfer. Teenage learners were able to show sociopragmatic competence by using different refusal strategies in face of different request nature and relationships with interlocutors. However their pramalinguistic resources were limited and adjuncts did not exist.