Refusal Strategies of Hungarian Speakers of Japanese in Comparison with Native Speakers
Abstract
The present research is a comparative study of the refusal strategies of
Hungarian speakers of Japanese and native speakers. It is a pilot study based on the IJAS International Corpus of Japanese as a Second Language.
When learning or teaching a second language, the pragmatic features of a language
cannot be neglected. In order to communicate succesfully, second language learners
have to focus not only on the grammatical aspects of a language, but the pragmatic
aspects should also be emphasised. The speech act of refusal can be described as one of
the more complex speech acts. Moreover, different cultures may have different
strategies for refusing the interlocutor. However, when communicating in another
language, we often tend to follow the pragmatic patterns of our mother tongue. This
can lead to misunderstandings or unsuccessful communication. Textbooks focus only
partially on refusal strategies, and one can often notice textbooklike startegies in the
refusals produced by students.
In the present study we analysed four role plays of Hungarian learners of Japanese who
have already been to Japan and role plays of four students who have studied the
language in Hungary. The results were compared with four role plays of native Japanese
speakers. The study focused on the pragmatic strategies used by the participants.
The aim of the study was twofold: 1) to compare the refusal strategies of Hungarian
Japanese speakers and native speakers 2) to highlight the pragmatic competences that
need to be developed in order to facilitate effective communication.
The results showed that Hungarian speakers did not use direct strategies expressed by
performatives. In terms of indirect strategies, the analysed examples from the corpus
showed that only four of the eleven indirect strategies mentioned by Beebe et al. (1990)
were used, and one extra category was found, namely negotiation. The most striking
difference between the Hungarian and the native Japanese speakers was found in the
use of adjuncts.