Pragmatic Failure of Refusal Patterns of Chinese-Australian from a Cross-cultural Perspective

The study explores the refusal patterns of Chinese-Australian from a cross-cultural perspective. By analyzing the manifestations of pragmatic failures of refusal patterns between 30 Chinese students and 30 Australian university students in intercultural communication. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, and reflective journals and analyzed through thematic analysis using the framework of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) as the focal research dimension in measuring the Chinese and Australian refusal realization patterns. The results show that because of the different cultural perspective, Chinese and Australian university students always have different responses in the same situation when they refuse others. To increase the chances in cross-cultural communication, we have to apply the refusal strategy based on the cultural background of the communicative object