Abstract:
The present study, on the one hand, attempted to investigate the strategies applied in dispreferred responses by Iranian university students of English and the extent to which pragmatic transfer could occur. On the other hand, the study aimed to probe into the association between dispreferred organization and turn-shape. To this end, 31 relevant naturally occurring conversations, totaling 120 min drawn from approximately 9 hr of audio-taped conversations from 40 voluntary students, were recorded from which the refusal strategies and complexity of turns were elicited. The findings suggested that a sizable number of the learners delivered responsibility to other sources using accounts and discourse markers. As for preference organization, the results showed that solidarity was the dominant aspect among the learners. Moreover, the study compared 2 measures of L2 competence: oral interaction and a discourse completion test (DCT). The results showed that the 2 methods induced somewhat different production samples from the learners in terms of frequency, type of refusal strategies, and turn shapes. These variations suggest that production through DCTs cannot depict the complexity of natural conversations in which the speakers find themselves free to control the conversation. Finally, it is important to consider cultural differences in language usage by emphasizing the significance of a curriculum that utilizes the act of refusal within its cultural contexts.
Machine summary:
com Abstract The present study, on the one hand, attempted to investigate the strategies applied in dispreferred responses by Iranian university students of English and the extent to which pragmatic transfer could occur.
Levinson (1983), based on his observation introduced four strategies for performing dispreferred responses: (1) Delays which include silences preceding the delivery of the response, prefaces of various kinds, and insertion sequences which displace the response over a series of turns; (2) prefaces such as uh or well; (3) token agreements, appreciations, apologies, and other forms of hesitation; (4) accounts which refer to explanations for the disagreement or rejection and declination component which are marked as uncertain, conditional, or indirect (p.
Many studies have been conducted to investigate the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural influences on the use of various refusal strategies in different languages (Al-Issa, 2003; Allami Naeimi, 2010; Al-Shalawi, 1997; Beebe, Takahashi, Uliss-Weltz, 1990; Chang, 2009; Keshavarz, Eslami-Rasekh, Ghahraman, 2006; Taleghani-Nikazm, 2002).
Strategies used in responses to DCTs Refusal Strategy f (%) Delays Silence 0 (0) Insertion sequences 0 (0) Statement of willingness 80 (8) Statement of alternative 52 (5) Promise of future acceptance 66 (7) Prefaces Discourse marker 198 (19) Token Agreement 0 (0) Appreciation 100 (10) Apology 122 (12) Hesitation (repetition) 0 (0) Accounts 298 (29) Declination component 98 (10) Table 3 shows the number of strategies used by the participants when they produced written dispreferred responses.