REFUSAL STRATEGIES OF UNDERGRADUATES IN FORMAL AND INFORMAL SITUATIONS IN AN ACADEMIC CONTENT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55197/qjssh.v7i5.1416Keywords:
refusal, speech act, strategies, context, Malaysian undergraduate studentsAbstract
The research paper reports a study on the use of refusal strategies to requests by a group of Malaysian undergraduate students. The study aims to investigate the type of refusal strategies used by Malaysian undergraduate students and the patterns that form their refusal statements in formal and informal situations. A DCT questionnaire comprising four critical situations was distributed to obtain their written responses about their refusal strategies. The results show that Malaysian undergraduate students prefer using the indirect approach to refusing in both formal and informal situations. The patterns of refusals in the study show that refusals in formal situations were lengthy and extensive encompassing more than three semantic formulas compared to refusals in informal situations which were brief and concise comprising less than three semantic formulas. Overall, the study shows that the students prefer indirect refusals displaying a priority for preserving face and maintaining good, social relationships with others.
References
[1] Abdul Sattar, H.Q., Lah, S.C., Raja Suleiman, R.R. (2011): Refusal strategies in English by Malay university students. – GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies 11(3): 69-81.
[2] Amirrudin, S., Salleh, N.B. (2016): Refusal strategies in English among Malay ESL students. – Infrastructure University Kuala Lumpur Research Journal 4(1): 30-40.
[3] Beebe, L., Takahashi, T., Uliss-Weltz, R. (1990): Pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals. – In: Scarcella, R., Andersen, E., Krashen, S.D. (Eds.) Developing Communicative Competence in a Second Language. Newbury House 19p.
[4] Brown, P., Levinson, S.C. (1987): Politeness: Some universals in language usage. – Cambridge University Press 345p.
[5] Eslami, Z. (2010): Refusals: How to develop appropriate refusal strategies. – In: Martínez-Flor, A., Usó-Juan, E. (Eds.) Speech Act Performance: Theoretical, Empirical and Methodological Issues, John Benjamins Publishing Company 20p.
[6] Fetzer, A. (2022): Role of context. – In: Kecskes, I. (Ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press 25p.
[7] Goddard, C. (2004): Speech-acts, values and cultural scripts: A study in Malay ethnopragmatics. – In: Cribb, R. (Ed.) Asia Examined: Proceedings of the 15th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia. Asian Studies Association of Australia, Canberra 6p.
[8] Ishihara, N., Cohen, A.D. (2022): Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. – Routledge 354p.
[9] Kasper, G., Dahl, M. (1991): Research methods in interlanguage pragmatics. Technical Report No. 1. – Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, University of Hawaii 60p.
[10] Kathir, R. (2015): Refusal strategy: Patterns of refusal amongst language academicians at public universities in Malaysia. – Journal of Education and Social Sciences 1: 158-170.
[11] Lim, K.H. (2003): Budi as the Malay mind. – IIAS Newsletter 31: 1p.
[12] Mohd Jalis, F.M., Abdul Jabar, M.A., Abdul Halim, H., Bukhardt, J.M. (2019): Refusal strategy used by Malay and German native speakers to refuse requests. – Asian Social Science 15(4): 49-59.
[13] Paramasivam, S. (2024): Power play in business negotiations: Insights from discourse. – UPM Press 339p.
[14] Razali, I.R., Abdullah, N.E. (2021): Pragmatic competence in requests, apologies and refusals: A study on Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) students. – International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences 11(10): 847-859.
[15] Yan, G., Bidin, S.J. (2025): Refusal strategies and face concerns: A cross-cultural study of Chinese and Malaysian undergraduates. – Forum for Linguistic Studies 7(10): 132-151.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 SURESH RAMACHANDIRAN, SHAMALA PARAMASIVAM
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
