OSTENSIBLE REFUSAL SPEECH ACT IN THE CHINESE LINGUAL CULTURE: LINGUOPRAGMATIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

Language is not only a cultural phenomenon, but also a cultural carrier. Different national languages contain their unique traditional culture, and reflect their ways of thinking, national customs, social values and so on. Refusal as a face threatening act occurs frequently in people’s daily life, which needs to adopt some strategies to decline the damaging of the interlocutors. Therefore, refusal speech act has been regarded as an important research topic in the field of linguistics. In recent years, with the development of pragmatics and the in-depth study of speech act theory, many studies on refusal speech act have appeared throughout the world. According to previous researches, in different lingual cultures, it has different manifestations and characteristics. In Chinese culture, especially under the influence of Confucianism, people respect etiquette and pay attention to politeness. The ostensible refusal speech act as a typical special form of refusal speech act appears in the Chinese lingual culture . However, under this circumstance, it no longer takes the functions of threatening other’s face or good intentions; instead it shows politeness in Chinese culture. Due to differences among cultures, there are many misunderstandings or incomprehension situations which may lead to a failure in cross-cultural communication. Therefore, in order to ensure the smooth and successful intercultural communication, the cultural background knowledge of the target language is a necessity. The research has been conducted from the perspective of pragmatics, combined with the Chinese culture background, in order to give a brief introduction of this special speech act, as well as deepen the scientific understanding of it, so as to promote the adequate level of cross-cultural communication in the future.