Saying “no” in emails in Mandarin Chinese and Australian English

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12859986
AutoresWei Li (0000-0002-3581-849X, University of Tasmania, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume18
Fascículo2
Páginas367-402
Data de publicação2022-03-31
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Politeness Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1612-5681 • E-ISSN: 1613-4877
EditoraDe Gruyter Mouton (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/pr-2020-0005
OpenAlexW4220854101
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas40

The present study examined the differences between Mandarin Chinese and Australian English in email refusals. An email production questionnaire (EPQ) and retrospective verbal reports (RVR) were used to collect data. Results showed that while both groups preferred directness to indirectness at the utterance level, Chinese participants used indirectness significantly more frequently than Australian participants in refusals of requests. In addition, Chinese refusals were more indirect than Australian refusals at the discourse level. Chinese participants chose significantly more supportive moves than Australian participants and tended to put multiple supportive moves before the direct head act in refusals of either invitations or requests. The two groups also differed considerably in the content of refusal strategies. Moreover, both the EPQ and RVR data showed that Chinese were more sensitive to social status than Australians. The findings of this study were broadly consistent with studies on refusals in oral communication despite some differences

China · Linguistics · Mandarin Chinese · Political science · Utterance · Digital Communication and Language · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Psychology · Social Psychology