Strategies of Refusal to Requests by English Department Students of State University of Malang

This is a pragmatic investigation into the speech act of refusing as made by English Department students of State University of Malang. This study investigates refusals of thirty participants to request of higher, equal, and lower status interlocutors. Subjects’ refusals were collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) taken from Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz (1990). They are asked to respond in English to three different situations in which they carry out the speech act of refusal. The first situation describes an employer-employee relationship. Here, the respondents have to refuse a lower status interlocutor; in this case is the employee. The second situation describes a friendship relationship since the respondents have to refuse an equal status interlocutor. The third situation describes an employer-employee relationship as in the first situation. However, in this situation, the respondents have to refuse a higher status interlocutor; that is his/her boss. Data are mainly analyzed in terms of semantic formula sequences and were categorized according to the refusal taxonomy by Beebe et al. (1990). Semantic formulas which do not fit the refusal taxonomy by Beebe et al. are analyzed based on Kwon’s findings, while the others are labeled by the researcher. Results indicate that although a similar range of refusal strategies are found in refusals to higher, equal and lower status interlocutors, the content or tone of the formulas are different. For instance, in using the statement of regret, the participants are more likely to use intensification (e.g., I do apologize, I’m very sorry, etc.) to refuse higher status interlocutors, but not to equal and lower status interlocutor. Over all, the participants tend to mitigate or lessen the effect of their refusals in refusing higher and lower status requesters. Refusing in an L2 is a complex task because it requires the acquisition of the socio-cultural values of the target culture. Thus, in acquiring an L2, it is not enough to only study the language grammar but also the culture to effectively communicate with L2 native speakers. Due to the methodology of written data elicitation, other factors such as intonation, stress, non-verbal gestures and facial expressions were not observed. Thus naturalistic data collection, from roleplays or recordings made in natural settings, would be desirable as both a complement and as a self-standing methodology in more extensive studies