An Analysis of Refusal Speech Acts Used by Vocational Students at a Vietnamese College

Abstract

Refusal is considered one of the most frequently performed speech acts in people's daily lives. However, making a speech act of refusal is a challenge, especially for non-native English speakers, due to the possibility of losing other people’s face and corrupting interlocutors’ interactions. This study investigates how Vietnamese vocational students make the speech act of refusal to invitations, offers, suggestions, and requests. Participants of this study are 18 Vietnamese vocational students who are studying English as a second language (L2). They were asked to complete a Written Discourse Completion Task containing 12 scenarios, including 3 invitations, 3 offers, 3 suggestions, and 3 requests in higher, equal, and lower interlocutor status. Collected data were then analyzed using the classification of refusal strategies proposed by Beebe et al. (1990). The findings show that indirect strategies are preferred by Vietnamese vocational students, which can mitigate the risk of losing other people's face. The findings also reveal that Vietnamese vocational students tend to use different combinations of indirect strategies, adjuncts to refusals, and direct strategies to produce speech act sets. In addition, the interlocutor status does not influence the refusal strategies that Vietnamese vocational students choose.