THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY
HYDERABAD, AP, INDIA 500 007
School of language Sciences
Refusing an offer by Vietnamese speakers speaking English
Course: Language and communication
Instructor: Dr. Kalyanamalini Sahoo
Submitted by Nguyen, Huynh Trang
Roll no: 151/P/2012
Abstract
Refusals, as all other speech acts, occur in all languages and cultures. According to
Searle (1969), all linguistic communication involves the production of speech acts, such as
offering apologies, asking questions, making promises, or refusing. The present study is a pilot
study investigating the speech act of refusals. The aims of the study are to investigate the
preferred semantic formulas or strategies used by Vietnamese speaker speaking English (VSSE)
to refuse an offer in L2 interactions. Data were taken from Discourse Completion Test by thirty
participants who have been studying in Australia. The findings show that participants differ in
the ways they perform refusals. Thanking or gratitude adjuncts followed by a reason or
explanation and regret with future acceptance were preferred formulas used in refusing offers. The
choice of these semantic formulas suggests the influence of Vietnamese culture in respondents’
realizations of refusals in English even in the L2 environment. The offer refusal strategies were also
different to the higher, equal and lower interlocutors.
Key Words: speech act, offers, refusal strategies, semantic formulas, Vietnamese
speakers speaking English
Introduction
As we have known, English is a widespread and important language in the world today.
It is used in different fields from international academic conferences to news reports to popular
music lyrics. It is used not only among native speakers and nonnative speakers of English but
among nonnative speakers. Considering the importance of English more and more people study
it as a foreign language in different countries. In Vietnam, English is taught as a compulsory
foreign language subject for students at junior, senior high schools and universities. However,
nowadays, a lot of foreign companies or foreigners come to Vietnam to work, to study or to
visit. Therefore, the need to communicate with these people is higher. People want to have
communicative competence not only linguistic competence as before. In addition, Vietnamese
students also get their higher education in some other countries where English is the medium of
the teaching. Thus, the desire to achieve communicative competence is rising more and more.
Searle (1969) who suggested that speaking a language is performing speech acts such as making
statements, giving commands, asking questions, making promises etc.
A refusal is considered as a negative response to an offer, request, invitation and suggestion.
Refusals happen in our daily communication. However, it is very difficult to reject an offer by
someone. Because an offer means an act of saying that you are willing to do something for
somebody or give something to somebody (Oxford dictionary, page 1052).
Refusing an offer here means you are not willing or reject to do something when someone
offers you to do. It also means you don’t accept the offer help of someone. The communication
strategies are affected by many factors, particularly Culture, especially face and politeness.
Therefore, rejecting offers appropriately involves not only linguistic knowledge, but also
pragmatic knowledge. It is even harder to refuse someone’s offer in a foreign language. One
may have good vocabulary and perfect grammar but misunderstandings may arise if he or she
does not have pragmatic or communicative competence.
Refusing offers performed by Vietnamese in L2 interactions is the focus of my investigation.
This study seeks to explore the various refusal strategies which tend to be used by Vietnamese
speakers speaking English in the L2 environment.
Literature review
Speech acts
Language is the principle means we have to greet, compliment and insult one another; to
plead or flirt; to seek and supply information; and to accomplish hundreds of other tasks in a
typical day. Actions carried out through language are called speech acts.
Austin (1962) pointed out that some utterances in a language are acts themselves.
Philosophers such as Austin and Searle made efforts to assign functions to speech acts.
Specially, Searle (cited in J. Cutting, 2008) proposed five macro-classes of illocutionary act:
declarations, representatives, commissives, directives and expressives.
Declarations: These are words and expressions that change the word by their very
utterance, such as ‘I bet’, ‘I declare’, ‘ I resign’. It can be seen in : “I hereby pronounce you man
and wife” which turns two singles into a married couple, or “This court sentences you to ten
years imprisonment” which puts the person into prison.
Representatives: these are acts in which the words state what the speaker believes to be
the case, such as ‘ describing’, ‘claiming’, ‘hypothesizing’, ‘ insisting’ and ‘predicting’.
For example:
‘I think girls work harder than boys. Maybe not doing your work is a sign of being cool’,
said Jack Nivenson, a 14-year-old student at Winslow Middle School. (Boston.com News, 26
March 2006)
Commissives: This includes acts in which the words commit the speaker to future action,
such as ‘promising’, ‘offering’, ‘threatening’, ‘refusing’, ‘vowing’ and volunteering’.
Directives: the speaker’s attempts to get the hearer to do something, here the speaker is
wanting to achieve a situation in which the world will fit his words (commanding, ordering,
requesting, warning). Example: Keep silence, please!
Expressives: It represent the speaker’s feelings as he makes his words match his internal
psychology world (thanking, apologizing, complimenting). Example: I’m sorry for being late.
Politeness theory
There are two basic aspects to being polite. The first rests on the fact that human beings
respect one another’s presence, privacy and physical space. We avoid intruding on other
people‘s lives, try not to be too inquisitive about their activities and take care not to impose our
presence on them. This is called negative politeness. On the other hand, when we let people
know that we enjoy their company, feel comfortable with them, like something in their
personality or are interested in their well-being, we show positive politeness ( Finegan, 1992).
Viewing politeness from the perspective of its normative rather than strategic function, Leech
formulated politeness maxims which suggest that certain acts are, depending on their benefit or
cost to the hearer, inherently polite and face giving ( e.g., thanking, offering, inviting,
congratulating, greeting), while others are inherently impolite and face-threatening( e.g.,
requesting, refusing).
Definition of refusals
According to Brown and Levinson (1987), refusals are face-threatening acts and Searle
(1977) put them to the category of commissives because they commit the refuser to (not)
performing an action. Chen et al (1995) consider refusals as a response to an initiating act and
refusals are considered a speech act by which a speaker “fails” to engage in an action proposed
by
the
interlocutor.
From
a
sociolinguistic
perspective,
refusals
are
important because they are sensitive to social variables such as gender, age, level of
education, power, and social distance (Brown and Levinson, 1987; Fraser, 1990; Smith,
1998). Overall, refusals are complex speech acts that require not only long sequences of
negotiation and cooperative achievements, but also “face saving maneuvers to accommodate the
noncompliant nature of the act” (Gass & Houck, 1999, p.2; FélixBrasdefer, 2006, p.2160).
Until now, there have been some works studying about refusals related to Vietnamese
learners of English. Dung (1995) analysed the interlanguage refusal behaviour of Vietnamese
speaking Vietnamese (W), Vietnamese speaking English (VE) and Australian native speakers of
English (AE). The results showed that Australians spoke less and used more straightforward
responses, e.g. no + reason. W refusals tended to be more elaborate than those of AEs.
Pragmatic transfer was also reported in this study, as occurring in the distribution and discourse
organizations of the RSs. Nguyen (2006) investigates similarities and differences in refusals of
requests between Australian native speakers of English (AEs), and Vietnamese learners of
English (VEs). She found that the frequency of use of the speech act of refusals (SARs) by AEs
is different from that by VEs, though they do share some similarities. While AEs share the same
number of SARs when they communicate with their interlocutors, VEs are more sensitive to the
social status and the social distance of the requesters. In addition, related to differences in
culture, AEs and VEs also differ in the ways they say “NO” to their conversational partners.
VEs are apt to express refusals more elaborately. They used more statements of regret, more
statements of sympathy, more addressing terms and more reason/excuse/explanations in their
refusals than AEs. The excuse/reason/explanations given by VEs reveal their reluctance to
express their disinclination to comply, in contrast to the AEs.
Methodology
The present study is a pilot study to explore some refusal strategies to offers employed by
Vietnamese speakers speaking English (VSSE) in L2 environment. The study aims to answer
the research questions: what strategies do Vietnamese speakers speaking English (VSSE) use in
terms of semantic formulas when refusing offers to lower, equal, or higher social status
interlocutors? Is there evidence of pragmatic transfer of L1 in the refusal strategies of VSSE?
The refusals data was obtained with the help of Discourse Completion Task (DCT) procedure. A
form of a written questionnaire consisting of incomplete responses was delivered via email to thirty
participants. They were called Vietnamese speakers speaking English (VSSE) in the study. They have
been studying their BA, MA and MBA at some universities in Australia such as: Griffith University,
University of Queensland and University of Melbourne. They are the researcher’s friends and
colleagues so it was convenient for the data collection. The range of ages of VSSE was 20-32. All had
been living in Australia for a minimum of one year. The DCT consisted of four situations which
elicited refusals to offerings from higher, equal and lower social status interlocutors. (See
Appendix)
Data analysis
Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss- Weltz’s (1985)’s classification of refusals was used to analyze the
data. All responses were coded in three major categories, i.e. direct refusals, indirect refusals and
adjuncts.
This
examine
refusals
classification
among
system
native
and
has
been
non-native
widely
used
and
speakers
in
different
adapted
to
languages.
Data collected from the participants were analyzed by using semantic formulas as units of
analysis. The following is a classification of refusal responses based on Beebe, Takahashi, and
Uliss- Weltz’s (1985), with examples.
I. Direct
1. Performative: I refuse
2. Non performative Statement: no, I can't, and I don't think so.
3. Mitigated negative willingness: It seems I can't.
II. Indirect:
1. Statement of regret: I'm sorry
2. Wish: I wish I could help you...
3. Excuse, reason or explanation:...I have to take my mother to the doctor
4. Statement of alternative :...try X!,it might be better if it is given to other person.
5. Set condition for (future or past) acceptance: ...you should have asked before
6. Promise (of future acceptance): next time maybe; I promise I'll ...
7. Statement of principle: I don't like to take extra people because they won't have a seat belt.
8. Attempt to dissuade interlocutor:
a. Threat or statement of negative consequences to the requester: you come at
an unfortunate time. I can't help you.
b.
Criticise
the
requester/request
etc.
(statement
of
negative
feeling/
opinion):
...I don't think you can return the money back.
c. Let interlocutor off the hook: It’s OK, I'll be all right.
d. Self defense:
we can do, ... I can carry myself.
III. Adjuncts to Refusals
1. Statement of positive opinion/feeling or agreement: I'd love to really...
2. Pause fillers: oh.., well.., uhm.., and er...
3. Gratitude or appreciation: Thanks ; thank you.
4. Exclamation: Gosh! ouch!..
Results
The responses taken from the respondents will be analyzed and discussed in this part according
to each situation. Data revealed that adjuncts followed by reason were most often used to refuse the
offers by the participants. It was found that adjunct of gratitude/ appreciation “thanks” or “thank you”
was preferred most by participants in their refusals to offers (86.67%). To soften their refusals, the
respondents also employed thanking word in their direct refusals as “No, thanks”. According to
Leech (1983), thanking has a convivial function whose objective is to maintain balance or harmony.
The strategy maintains a feeling of solidarity and interpersonal warmth between familiar interact ants
when expressed in appropriate situations.
As raised from the beginning of the study, the role of status in relation to the realization of
speech acts will be discussed. In situation 1 the speaker has to refuse an offer from a professor who
offers to help with bike broken problem (the refuse person is in a lower status relative to the
interlocutor). It was found that participants avoided direct strategies like ‘no’ because saying “no” to
someone is considered as an impolite act or an insult to the other person. Therefore, it was found that
only indirect strategies were used to refuse the offer from a professor who is higher status interlocutor.
The indirect strategies used in this situation show that VSSEs even have been residing in L2
environment they also keep the Vietnamese culture of respecting their teachers. Actually, this strategy
was softened with the use of the address term “professor”. Since the person to be refuse was a
professor, the use of “Prof.” was usual for Vietnamese participants. They wanted to show the
respect, consideration and willingness to comply with the offer which is in Vietnamese culture. It
can be inferred that the L1 of the participants still has great influence to their use of L2. The results
also indicated that the majority of participants favored the use of semantic formulas [gratitude
adjunct] and [reason]/ [dissuade the interlocutor](see examples from Table 1).
Thanking word
Reasons/ explaining why not accepting
Thank you sir.
I can manage/ handle it.
Thank you my professor.
But I think I can do it by myself.
Thanks for your consideration.
Many thanks to you, my professor.
I know there’s one repair store near here.
I think I can fix it by myself.
Table 1: Responses to the offer in situation 1
In brief, the refusals to an offer to a high social status person of VSSE are still influenced by
their L1 even they are living in L2 environment. The favorable address term of “Prof.” and
indirect strategy were the evidence of pragmatic transfer of L1 in the respondents’ realization of
refusals in English.
When refusing an offer to an equal status person as in Situation 2 in which the speaker has
to refuse an offer to give the lesson for one missed class from a classmate (the refuser is in equal
status relative to the interlocutor, the semantic formula in the order of [gratitude] [Reason] or
[gratitude] [reason] and [future acceptance] was found in most of the responses as in table 2. The
participants tried to refuse the offers to the interlocutors in a way which didn’t hurt that person
even to the equal status person. The future acceptance or promises were also added to make the
refusals more polite.
Thanking word
Reasons/ explaining why not
accepting
Thanks.
I’ve just borrowed the notebook
from another classmate so I think I
can do my homework now.
Thank you so much.
I think I can deal with the If I have any problems, I
homework.
Thanks for your kindness.
You’re my best friend.
will ask you for helping
me.
I have sent an email to our teacher
to have more information.
I think I can do that well.
I will ask for your help if I
can’t.
Table 2: Responses to situation 2
In addition, in this situation, the speaker has equal status with the interlocutor so direct
strategies were also found like [no] or [negative ability], e.g. “No, I can handle it” or “No, I will
try to solve it by myself”.
Similarly, as in Situation 3 the speaker has to refuse an offer to have some cakes from a
friend (the refuser is in equal status relative to the interlocutor), the respondents were found to use
both indirect and direct strategies as in Table 3 and Table 4 .
Compliments/ exclamations
Expressing the regrets
It looks delicious
But I’m really full. I’ll try it next time.
Oh, What a pity!
I wish I didn’t eat anything before I come here.
These cakes smell delicious, I really loved But I had lunch before coming here.
them.
Table 3: Indirect strategies responses to offer in situation 3
The direct strategies used to refuse the situation don’t seem to hurt the listeners. The
speakers tried to soften the interlocutor by using thanking words.
Negative words/phrases
Thanking words
Expressing regrets
No
Thanks
I just had some food.
No
Thanks
I’m full now.
Table 4: Responses to offer in situation 3 with direct strategies
The responses with compliments or exclamations and providing reason may be seen as evidence
of the tendency among Vietnamese people to their refusal utterances. However, the direct refusals
were found as in Table 5 showed that linguistic environment where the VSSE resided could have
some influence on their choice of the direct refusal strategy. This is consistent with Blum-Kulka,
House and Kasper (1989), who suggest that, directness tended to rise with an increase in
familiarity, that is, it appears more common in refusing familiar interlocutor's offers, such as
those made by friends or classmates. The more familiar the speaker and the interlocutor are the
more direct in the refusal utterances.
When refusing a low status person, as in Situation 4, in which the speaker has to refuse an
offer from a student giving help with the heavy bags of shopping (the refuser is in higher status
relative to the interlocutor), the most direct strategies were found to be used as in Table 6.
Negative words/phrases
No
You don’t need to help me with this.
No
Thanks. I can manage.
Table 6: Responses to situation 4 with direct strategies
The respondents also employed indirect strategies in their offer refusals as seen in Table 7.
Positive appreciation
Reasons/ explaining why not Thanking word
accepting
I really appreciate your concern
but I can carry these bags by Thanks any way.
A nice offer
myself
You’re so kind
but I can manage.
Thank you.
Table 7: Responses to offer in situation 4 with indirect strategies
Discussion and conclusions
This is a pilot study. Only thirty responses were selected for analysis. The study investigates
the speech act of refusing offers to higher, equal and lower social status person. Although the
study has limited generalization, the results may provide a useful basis for discussion on
Vietnamese inter language behavior and also bring a promise for future studies.
The notion of Brown and Levinson (1987) that people cooperate in maintaining face in
interactions was reinforced by the results of this study. Refusals are considered as face-threatening
speech acts. Therefore, the Vietnamese participants employed more types of indirect refusal
patterns when refusing an offer.
Politeness is the norm that people of different culture backgrounds must obey and uphold
because to satisfy other’s face is to save your own face. Therefore, VSSEs in this study prefer
the indirect refusal speech act in offers to the direct refusal speech act even they have been
residing in another language environment due to the influence of Vietnamese culture. Leech
(1983) states that indirect speech acts tend to be more polite because they increase the degree of
optional degree. The more indirect the illocution is, the more diminished and tentative its force.
Stubbs (1983) suggests that the more indirectly speech acts are expressed, the more deniable
they are by the speaker and the more options they give to the interlocutor. Using direct or
indirect speech act in life depends on many factors: age, gender, relationship, social status …The
present study shows that the participants used more indirect strategies when giving refusals to
offers even to a lower social status interlocutor.
Traditionally, Vietnamese value indirectness in speaking in order to save the face to
others and maintain good relationships between interlocutors and within society as whole.
Importantly, in Vietnamese culture, the face of Vietnamese involved the respect of hierarchy,
the status admission of interlocutor. Therefore, politeness behavior is not only personal
politeness strategies but also forcefully is the clever choice in vocabulary. That can be explained
for the employ of the address term “Prof” in the first situation of the study.
Moreover, Vietnamese are influenced by agricultural culture and Confucianism.
Therefore, they focus on the delicateness, consideration in their language use to maintain the
affection and gratitude of their friends, their neighbours… This can explain for the choosing of
many adjuncts of gratitude in their refusals of the participants in the study.
Li Honglin (2007) says that the variety of speech acts is influenced by the social
distance, social power, and difficulty of acquired behavior. According to Li, The cross-linguistic
differences are due to basic differences in cultural values. Social hierarchy is typically illustrated
in the aspects of superior and inferior social ranks, parents and children, teachers and students.
Social distance is typically displayed in the relation of close relatives or friends and ordinary
friends or strangers. Thus, it can explain for the selection of refusal speech acts in the study. The
participants may use direct or indirect depends on the interlocutor’s status. The more distant the
social distance, the more indirect the refusal speech acts.
For the semantic formula of strategies were used, the findings of the present study
show that adjuncts of gratitude followed with reasons or explanations for not accepting most
frequently used among the participants and occurred in responses given to all four DCT
situations. Besides, some participants also expressed their regrets and made a promise for future
acceptance as in situation 3, e.g. “I have eaten before coming here. I will try next time.” These
kinds of strategies help to maintain positive face with the interlocutor and to soften the
threatening power of refusals. According to the results obtained from Chen’ study (1995), it
seems that when Vietnamese students are faced with situations in which they have to refuse an
offer, they try to avoid refusing directly so as to avoid overt confrontation and arousing the
feelings of discomfort in the other party; preferring to use formulas such as [explanation] and
[future acceptance].
From examining the refusals to offers with DCT situations, it is clear that sociopragmatic factors, such as social status are closely related to the subjects’ realization patterns of
refusals to offers. The participants of the study showed variation in the frequency and the
content of semantic formulas used in relation to the social variables, including the status of
interlocutors (higher, equal, and lower status). Participants tended to use certain semantic
formulas when refusing a higher-status professor (adjunct of gratitude and explanation), equal
status (gratitude words, reasons and future acceptance) and lower status student (thanking,
reason; negative ability, thanking). Direct strategies such as [no] or [negative ability] were not
used by any participants in higher status situation and mostly in equal; and lower status
situations. The findings from this study appear to be evidence of pragmatic transfer of L1 in
refusal strategies used by VSSE as in situation 1 and in other situations the VSSE used elaborate
words in their refusals.
However, the data instrument by DCT for this type of study has some drawbacks. Most
importantly, we can say that the written responses of the subject are representative for what the
subjects would say in their real communication conversations. Nevertheless, the questionnaire
represents a controlled context for collecting linguistic data representing a range of strategies
elicited from many participants. It is recommended to redo the same study using a more naturallyoccurring data collection technique.
In conclusion, the data obtained from this study give some understanding in the linguistic
research dealing with speech acts especially to the subjects who are living in L2 environment for
their study. This small study also helps the learners of English understand more about the refusal
strategies in the context of different situations so that they can communicate with the native
speakers of English better and more appropriately. For pedagogical recommendation, the teacher
should make every effort to create as many authentic contexts as possible in the classroom so
that the students can have more opportunities to use the language as in real life. According to
Wolfson, ability to interact successfully in a foreign language speech community depends on
communicative competence, of which sociolinguistic rules are an important aspect. Therefore,
besides
providing students vocabulary, pronunciations, grammatical rules or structures, the
teacher also need to provide some sociolinguistic rules especially speech acts.
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Appendix
Discourse Completion Task
This present task is designed to investigate how Vietnamese speakers speaking English
refuse offers in given situations. Imagine that you are speaking in actual conversation.
Personal Information
- Gender:
A.  Male
B.  Female
- Age: ___________
- How long have you been able to speak English?
For ______ years
- Where have you been studying? ____________________________
Questions:
Direction: Please write your answer in the blanks after each situation below
Situation 1: Your bike is broken. You meet your professor on the way and he offers
to help you to take it to bike repair store. You don’t want to bother him. How can you refuse
him?
…………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………
Situation 2: You miss a class and don’t know how to do your homework. Your
classmate offers to help you but you don’t want to bother him, how can you refuse him?
.........................................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................................
Situation 3: You come to visit your friend’s house. Your friend offers you some
cakes that you don’t want to eat. How can you refuse her?
…………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………………
Situation 4: You are a professor of one university. You are shopping at the supermarket and
one of your students notices that you are struggling with several bags of shopping. Your
student offers to assist you to carry the bags. You can handle them. You don’t want to get
the offer, how can you refuse?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
Thank you so much for your cooperation!