earticle

영어

Refusals represent one type of dispreferred response and the speech act which often referred as face-threatening acts. So we can observe the Politeness Principles in refusal situations. This study shows how Koreans make a refusal as a way of performing a speech act. This study investigated refusals of 20 males and 20 females of Korean speakers in Korea and the data were collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and were categorized according to the refusal taxonomy by Beebe et al. (1990). This study divided the situation into two parts: ‘request refusals’ and ‘offer refusals’. This data investigated refusals in the frequency and content of pragmatic strategies used in each situation in relation to the contextual variables, which include the status of interlocutors (i, e., power [+/-P], distance [+/-D], and the degree of imposition [high/low]. As it is known from Kwon's (2004) study, honorific language is highly developed in Korean society and is sensitive to power in speech act. However, the power's sensitivity can not be applicable to [-P] situations. So degree of imposition has to be considered as an important element in [-P] situations. This study studied the important of degree of imposition in [-P] situations, the difference of ‘request refusal’ and ‘offer refusals’ and compared the refusals of male and female in same gender interactions.