Linguistic politeness in Mexico: Refusal strategies among male speakers of Mexican Spanish

Félix-Brasdefer, J. César

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2006.05.004

Cited by 118 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Participants also reported that they would use informal openers such as hey instead of excuse me in their requests. This finding lends support to Felix-Brasdefer (2006) in that direct requests may not threaten the requestee's face but instead may be used to express closeness or affiliation.…”

Section: Findings and Discussion Contextual Factorssupporting

confidence: 62%

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Explanations of Request Formulations by Vietnamese Learners of English in Australia

Ha¹

2015

LEiA

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Request performances can be influenced by contextual factors. This paper examines the explanations of the request formulations of six Vietnamese learners of English in Australia. The retrospective interviews provide interesting insights into learners' request wording, such as the underlying motivations and reasoning, that are not apparent in traditional analyses of the forms. First, an analysis of learners' contextual perceptions shows that age differences, perceptions of the relative role relationship, and the formality of the situation influence their request formulation. Second, learners' judgements of politeness and their reported use of politeness devices suggest that learners may rely on supportive moves to manage harmony with their interlocutors. Therefore, the study suggests that appeal to alternative sociopragmatic interpretations could be the main reason for the differences in making requests between Vietnamese learners of English and English native speakers. The findings may advocate the explicit teaching of request speech acts for Vietnamese learners.This study employed retrospective interviews following discourse completion tasks (DCTs) to explore learners' pragmatic knowledge about request speech acts. Requests are both common and sensitive in daily communication. They are particularly important for learners in a studyabroad context who cannot avoid making requests during their stay. Request formulations are influenced by contextual factors which are culture specific (Spencer-Oatey, 2008). To make an appropriate request for a specific communicative situation, a learner has to take into consideration the contextual factors involved, for example, the relative social power and the extent of social distance from the interlocutor, and then be able to select appropriate linguistic forms to carry out the act (Spencer-Oatey, 2008).Literature on requests has predominantly focused on performance data, such as role-plays or written DCTs. Little research has provided insights into what underlies request performances, especially for Southeast Asian learners of English. Examining transcriptions of verbal reports could be one useful method in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) research, since this could provide insights into learners' perceptions of speech act situations and the influence of such perceptions on speech act utterances (Cohen, 2004). This study used interviews following written DCTs to examine the reasoning for request formulations by Vietnamese learners of English regarding perceptions about contextual factors, politeness consideration, and the use of supportive moves (i.e., peripheral elements).

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Section: Findings and Discussion Contextual Factorssupporting

confidence: 62%

“…Comments from the interviews also show a close relationship between the formality and politeness judgements (Felix-Brasdefer, 2006). Participant 4 commented, "Situation 2 is informal so I use [a] less polite request than in the first situation."…”

Section: Findings and Discussion Contextual Factorsmentioning

confidence: 90%

Explanations of Request Formulations by Vietnamese Learners of English in Australia

Ha¹

2015

LEiA

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“…And yet, despite abundant research on refusals in a variety of contexts across cultures (e.g., Beebe et al 1990;Felix-Brasdefer 2006), there is very little research on refusals in workplaces, let alone multicultural workplaces (with the exception of Daly et al 2004). This is particularly surprising in the light of the increasing globalization and mobility of the workforce (Wong et al 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I can't remember them ever not doing whatI tell them!”: Negotiating face and power relations in ‘upward’ refusals in multicultural workplaces in Hong Kong

Schnurr¹,

Zayts²

2013

Intercultural Pragmatics

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Original citation:Schnurr, Stephanie and Zayts, Olga. (2013) "I can't remember them ever not doing what I tell them!": Negotiating face and power relations in 'upward' refusals in multicultural workplaces in Hong Kong. Intercultural Pragmatics, Volume 10 (Number 4). pp. 593-616. Permanent WRAP url: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/58723 Copyright and reuse:The Warwick Research Archive Portal (WRAP) makes this work of researchers of the University of Warwick available open access under the following conditions. Copyright © and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable the material made available in WRAP has been checked for eligibility before being made available.Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-forprofit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. Publisher's statement:The final publication is available at www.degruyter.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ip-2013-0028 A note on versions: The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP url' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. Despite abundant research on refusals in a variety of contexts across cultures, there are very few studies of multicultural workplaces. This is particularly surprising considering that refusals have been described as a frequent " 'sticking point' in cross-cultural communication" (Beebe et al. 1990). This paper addresses this gap by drawing on more than 80 hours of authentic audio-and videorecorded spoken workplace discourse and a corpus of emails collected in multicultural workplaces in Hong Kong.Findings of this exploratory study indicate that refusals are complex communicative activities that are carefully negotiated among participants. We argue that in contrast to earlier studies, participants' socio-cultural backgrounds do not appear to be the main determining factor of how issues of face and power relations are negotiated in upward refusals. Rather, a range of other factors, including media of communication, normative ways of interacting in a workplace, the relationship between interlocutors, as well as the content of the refusal, are more relevant for explaining participants' communicative behavior.

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“…There are basically a few studies so far conducted to investigate the acts of refusal (Sarfo, 2011;Felix-Brasdefer, 2006;Nelson, Batal, & Bakary, 2002;Aziz, 2000;Kitao, 1996;Chen, Ye, & Zhang, 1995;Ikoma & Shimura, 1993). However, little research has been carried out to study the follow-up responses to refusals.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The acts of refusals have gained many attentions from many researchers including for examples American English refusals (Felix-Brasdefer, 2006), British refusals (Kitao, 1996), Chinese refusals (Chen, Ye, & Zhang, 1995), Japanese refusals (Ikoma & Shimura, 1993), Arabic refusals (Nelson, Batal, & Bakary, 2002), and Indonesian refusals (Aziz, 2000). These researchers have successfully revealed the strategies of politeness in expressing a refusal.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Follow-Up Responses to Refusals by Indonesian Learners of English as a Foreign Language

Muniroh¹

2013

Indonesian J. Appl. Linguist

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Abstract:The study is aimed at investigating strategies of follow-up responses to refusals performed by Indonesians learning English as a foreign language. Having known that his/her desire or want is refused by his/her hearer, a speaker may provide a follow-up response to the refusal to maintain the flow of a talk exchange. This act may also mitigate the tension and is able to prevent the speaker from being considered impolite or non-cooperative. The study involves 20 students of the English Education Department of Indonesia University of Education. The data were collected through Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs). The collected data were then analyzed by using the framework proposed by Searle (1969), Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), andAziz (2000). It is found that the respondents manifest the follow-up responses in a number of ways, which can be categorized as request, acceptance, apology, promise, refusal, and passive comment. These responses contain some strategies. While the category of request and refusal are manifested in six and two strategies respectively, the categories of acceptance, apology, promise, and passive comment are not further divided into finer categories because they only consist of illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs). This study concludes that an act of providing a follow-up response cannot be separated from the speaker's attempt to maintain harmony in communication. Keywords: follow-up response, speech act, refusalAbstrak: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengungkap strategi-strategi dari respon lanjutan terhadap tindak tutur menolak yang dilakukan oleh orang Indonesia pembelajar bahasa Inggris sebagai bahasa asing. Setelah mengetahui bahwa hasrat atau keinginannya ditolak, penutur memberikan respon lanjutan terhadap tindak tutur menolak untuk memelihara alunan percakapan. Selain itu, respon lanjutan dapat mengurangi ketegangan dalam komunikasi dan mampu mencegah penutur dari kemungkinan dianggap tidak sopan atau tidak kooperatif. Penelitian ini melibatkan 20 mahasiswa Jurusan Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris UPI. Data dikumpulkan melalui prosedur Angket Isian Wacana (AIW). Data terkumpul kemudian dianalisis dengan menggunakan kerangka dari Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), Searle (1969), dan Aziz (2000. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa respon lanjutan terhadap tindak tutur menolak direalisasikan dengan beberapa cara

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Linguistic politeness in Mexico: Refusal strategies among male speakers of Mexican Spanish

Cited by 118 publications

References 22 publications

Explanations of Request Formulations by Vietnamese Learners of English in Australia

Explanations of Request Formulations by Vietnamese Learners of English in Australia

“I can't remember them ever not doing whatI tell them!”: Negotiating face and power relations in ‘upward’ refusals in multicultural workplaces in Hong Kong

Follow-Up Responses to Refusals by Indonesian Learners of English as a Foreign Language

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