Development of Interlanguage Pragmatics on Refusals in Japanese

The aim of this study is to investigate Japanese L2 learner’s development of discourse patterns, hedges and reasoning expressions in the Head-Act of refusals. I analyzed cross-sectional data of refusal situations collected by oral discourse completion tests from 13 high-elementary, 19 intermediate and 13 advanced level L2 learners as well as 62 Japanese language native speakers (NS). Results showed that as the L2’s proficiency level advanced, the discourse patterns, hedges and reasoning expressions of the Head-Act became similar to their usages by NS. However, it was also evident that there are some hedges, such as “iya”, “-soo-ni-nai”, “te-iuka”, “kanji”, “dekireba”, which NS frequently use, but L2 learners, even advanced ones, hardly use. Moreover, advanced L2 learners do not distinguish between “node” and “kara” as it should be according to social distance to an interlocutor. Based on these findings, a selection of learning items is suggested to help L2 leaners appropriately and efficiently express refusals according to their proficiency levels.Section 1: Original Researc