Pragmatic Failure of Refusal Patterns of Chinese-Australian from a Cross-cultural Perspective

. The study explores the refusal patterns of Chinese-Australian from a cross-cultural perspective. By analyzing the manifestations of pragmatic failures of refusal patterns between 30 Chinese students and 30 Australian university students in intercultural communication. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, and reflective journals and analyzed through thematic analysis using the framework of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) as the focal research dimension in measuring the Chinese and Australian refusal realization patterns. The results show that because of the different cultural perspective, Chinese and Australian university students always have different responses in the same situation when they refuse others. To increase the chances in cross-cultural communication, we have to apply the refusal strategy based on the cultural background of the communicative object.


Introduction
Globalization process and rapid economic development of the world cause more frequent international cooperation and cross-cultural communication. People around the world maintain closer contact than before. Linguistic knowledge and the understanding of social and cultural situations are the basic factors to carry out fluent communication. Otherwise, it will bring about cultural fusion and cultural shock. Lakoff [14] (2001:212) pointed out that by studying a specific act rooted in a specific culture, people can understand who we are, what we want, and the rules and assumptions that bind us together as a society very well.
A review of extant literature showed that most researches are related to analyzing the refusal speech acts from different perspectives, including theories of pragmatics, cross-cultural communication, and second language acquisition [1] (Abdulrahman,2009). The refusal strategies [11] [15] [21] (Liao & Breshnahan,1996;Wang A.H, 2001;Hong,2011) are concentrated on the direct and indirect ways. And the refusal speech act comparison which is always in the western or Arica context of the USA, Australia, British, Omani, and Saudi [1] [19] [18] (Saeed & Masoume ,2018; Abdulrahman, A.A,2009; Jaishree, U, 2017) in cross-cultural communication. And the pragmatic transfer in some areas, such as business (Geraldine, R.B,2015). However, less attention has been paid to the patterns of refusal failures, especially the comparative study of refusal patterns between Chinese and Australian students from a cross-cultural perspective. Therefore, after the repeated discussion and literature review, the purpose of this paper is to reveal the different refusal pattern of Chinese and Australian students in daily communication. Based on this, the study aims to explain the pragmatic failure of refusal pattern of Chinese---Australian students in the fixed setting. Furthermore, this study attempts to develop brief strategies to do the refusal actions politely and less threaten others in the crosscultural situations.

Refusal speech
Refusal, as "a major cross-cultural sticking point for many non-native speakers" [4] (Beebe, Takahashi & Uliss-Weltz, 1990, 56) has been widely studied from different perspectives for its importance in cross-cultural communication. Refusals are also complex because they depend on variables such as social status, gender, and level of education [3] [4] (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1990; Beebe et al.,), as well as when transmitted through electronic modes of communication that limit extralinguistic cues. As the speech act of refusal is facethreatening, many scholars [ 4] [9] (Beebe et al.1990;Felix-Braser, 2006) connected it with the term "face". They suggested that refusals are very sensitive to face. Refusals have the potential to threaten the speaker or hearer's face or both [5] [20] (Brown&Levinson,1987;Snow & Benford,1988)). Refusal speech act, as a face-threatening activity to the hearer, mainly occurs when the speaker makes a suggestion, invitation, request, offer, etc., and the hearer directly or indirectly says -NO [15] (Liao & Bresnahan, 1996). To reduce the negative influence caused by the refusal speech act, people living in different countries or using different languages will adopt diverse and suitable refusal realization patterns [6] ( Brown, 1978). For speakers, it is a big challenging task for them to use skills to fit the target culture when they refuse the invitation or suggestions, require both linguistic abilities and communicative competence to make sure the messages in daily life are well planned and expressed appropriately [2] [12] (Hiroko, 2014;Al-Issa, 2003).

Refusal Patterns of Cross-cultural Perspective
This study on the pragmatic failure of refusal patterns of Chinese and Australia in cross-cultural perspective is based on the framework of [4] Beebe et al.'s (1990) classification of refusal strategies and Wang's [21] (2001) refusal classification of refusal modifications as the classification basis to classify the refusal strategies and modifications in Chinese and American in the different situations. This thesis utilizes the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) as the focal research dimension in measuring the Chinese and Australian refusal realization patterns through collecting linguistic data and analyzing particular speech acts.

Statement of the Problem
In the process of cross-cultural communication, nonnative speakers always have difficulties in interpreting and performing speech acts appropriately. In other words, the non-native speakers need to require both the mastery of the target language and culture to avoid making pragmatic failures. As Beebe, Takahashi, and Snow [1] (1988) eloquently states that a refusal is "a major crosscultural 'sticking point' for many nonnative speakers" (p. 56). Since the speech act of refusal is face-threatening, it is worth studying for pragmatic failure. So, it is the very aim of this paper to examine Chinese-Australian speakers' pragmatic failures in the speech act of refusal with the assistance of a questionnaire and to find out the main factors which may influence or lead to the pragmatic failures in a second language. All in all, the present study is trying to explore the following questions: (1) What are the similarities and differences between Australian and Chinese students in the selection of refusal strategies? (2) What are the causes that lead to the pragmatic failures in the speech act of refusal?

Participants
A total of 60 university students participated in this study： 30 Chinese students from JCUT and 30 Australian students from Murdoch University in Western Australia. Taking into the consideration the validity of the research, their personal information such as age and gender, educational level, and so on are expected to be filled in, and these factors are taken into account when the questionnaires are distributed. The 30 Chinese subjects (18 males and 12 females) include 10 freshmen, 10 sophomores,10 juniors. The 30 Australian subjects (10 males and 20 females) include 10 freshmen, 10 sophomores, and 10 juniors. All the participants came from diversified majors. Moreover, all Chinese students involved in this study had passed the College English Test (CET-6), so their English proficiency could be considered as intermediate advanced level.

Data collection
Three types of data were collected in the study: questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and reflective journals. Most importantly, all procedures of data collection were permitted by every participant and consent forms were collected.
The questionnaires were completed online or in written versions when the participants had classes or the class break. Completing this English version of questionnaires needed to take participants approximately 20 min. All respondents were willing to give their honest opinion as they knew this questionnaire was a research purpose only and would be kept confidential for their responses. The data were collected from two groups (Chinese group and Australian group) of subjects and were decoded by using semantic formulas. The present study is based on Beebe et al [4] (1990)'s classification of semantic formulas. On the contrary, some modifications are done to the classification, because some semantic formulas in English refusals do not occur in Chinese subjects' questionnaires. The modified version of the classification of refusals is described in Table 1. Gratitude "Thank you very much" Statement of Principle "I never love watching films" Wish "I wish to go" Address Term "My dearest professor…" Alternative "You can turn to …for help" Further Acceptance "I will go to the party next time" Postponement "I will think about carefully" Pause Filler "Well…" "Oh…" "Yeah…" Positive Opinion "The idea sounds good" Criticism "Why do not answer the phone" Conditional Acceptance "If I do not find a perfect one, I will take this cup" Negative Consequence "I am afraid you cannot read my note" Return Favor "I will pay for you and me" The Australian and Chinese students' questionnaires are decoded based on Table1. For example, in situation 1 where a student refuses a friends' invitation to the movie premiere, one of the participants answered "I am terribly sorry I am afraid I can't. I had another date that day. Maybe we can appreciate that movie later." The answer can be illustrated in following brackets: (1) Sorry I am afraid I can't. [apology] (2) I had another date that day. [reason] (3) Maybe we can appreciate that movie later.
Moreover, to complement the findings of class observation, a semi-structured interview was utilized to explore the refusal patterns of Chinese-Australian from a cross-cultural perspective and what kind of refusal patterns lead to the pragmatic failures in the speech act of refusal, as well as how to handle the difficulties of the refusals. Interviews were carried out in Chinese or English with the selected ten students (3 Chinese, 3 Austrian) face to face in their dorm or classroom or online when they felt free. Each interview lasted forty-five minutes, and the researcher asked for students' permission to record the interview. Six recordings of interview were collected and then transcribed. Meanwhile, the researcher named the five interviews as S1, S2, S3, S4 S5 and S6.
In addition, the participants were asked to keep a fourweek reflection journal about the selection of refusal strategies and what are the main features for them. In the reflective journal, the teacher narrated their teaching practices and students' responses and expressed their views on intercultural teaching. Each teacher was asked to submit three reflection journals and fifteen reflective journals were collected and named J1, J2, J3...... J15.

Instrument:
Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is adopted to collect data in this study. Concerning DCT, Kulka and Kasper [13] (1989) believe "It is a controlled elicitation method which meets the demands for cross-cultural comparability", and it allows researchers to control the variables of the situation [10] [7] [8] (Gass & Houck, 1999;Chang, 2009Chang, ,2011). Thereby, it is likely to provide a consistent body of data. What's more, it has been proven quick and efficient in gathering a large amount of data. Kulka & Shoshana [13] (1987) claims that a DCT is an effective means of data collection when the purpose of the study is to inform about speakers' pragma linguistic knowledge of the strategies and linguistic forms by which communicative acts can be implemented, and about their socio-pragmatic knowledge of the context factors under which particular strategic and linguistic choices are appropriate [17] [19] (Peng & Wu, 2018;Saeed, 2016;).
Based on the questionnaire proposed by Beebe [4] (1990) which has been widely used to study refusal from the cross-cultural communication perspective by many scholars [4] Chang ,2011) and proved highly valid and with some modification, this DCT consists of 10 situations which are categorized into four stimuli. Research Procedure types eliciting refusal: 3 requests, 2 invitations, 2 offers, and 3 suggestions (seeing the following table 1). By using the same situations for both Chinese and Australia subjects, we can readily explore the similarities and differences between Australian and Chinese cultural perspectives through analysis of the refusal pattern used by the two groups. Therefore, it is suitable in this study to take DCT as a research instrument to yield a large number of refusals. Due to all Chinese students involved in this study having passed the CET Band-6 exams, they may have no language obstacles to answering this questionnaire (Appendix A).

Results
With the help of the DCT was categorized and indicated that there were mainly similarities and minor differences between native speaker Australian and Chinese university students for the data collection. Since the refusal strategies include two general components: direct and indirect strategies, the results will be elaborated separately. Direct and indirect refusal are the strategies that refusers refuse others' invitation, suggestion, request and offer directly. Table 2 shows the percentage of subjects choosing direct refusal, and indirect refusal from the notion of semantic formulas of refusals. It is easily noticed that the direct refusal strategy is not frequently used by native speakers (NS) especially Australian students in this study and Chinese students who are non-native speakers (NNS), because it is highly face-threatening and impolite. Moreover, we can also easily find that the percentage of native speakers choosing direct refusal is lower than that of Chinese EFL learners. The main reason is that Chinese participants believe that native speakers prefer to express their thoughts and feeling directly. When completing the questionnaires, the participants are conscious to avoid making pragmatic failures, but they are not clear about how directly the native speakers will behave because of their limited English proficiency.

Indirect refusal strategies
Indirect strategies are used very often and by using them, the refuser can express their refusal meaning clearly but not threaten the refugees face. We divide the indirect refusal strategies into three categories: explicit refusal, situation-specific and offering hope. (

1) Explicit Refusal
There are 4 kinds of refusal strategies in explicit refusal: apology, reason, statement of principle, postponement and negative consequence. We will compare the percentage of the explicit refusal strategy between the Chinese and Australian groups in detail. From Table 3, we can easily find that the distribution of explicit refusal of NNS and NS, the percentage of two groups choosing the strategy of explicit refusal is a little different. The two groups people may choose to show their apology and express the reasons. However, NNS chose to use much more postponement than NS. In order to choose be polite more, the NS use to get more negative consequences than NNS. It is situation constrained, that is to say, most NNS and NS are not used to choose explicit refusal, as it is a way to be impolite.
(2)Situation specific Situation refusal, address term and criticism are three kinds of situation specific refusal strategies. From Table 4, we can see that the percentage of two groups choosing these two strategies is not large. Different from the address term used to catch the hearer's attention, the address term in refusal is used to shorten the social distance between the communicators and make the refusal easy for the refuse to accept. It is situation constrained, that is to say, it can be only used when the interlocutors' social distance is very close. From Table 4, we can see that the two groups of subjects use almost the same strategy in the same situations. As criticism is highly face-threatening, we can easily see that NS only uses this strategy in which the refuser's social power is stronger than that of the refuse. However, Chinese EFL learners who neglect this rule use this strategy as the act does not conform to native speakers' culture. (

3) Offering the Hope
Here are four kinds of refusal strategies that can offer the refuse some hope either by accepting it later or on some conditions, which include alternative, future acceptance, and conditional acceptance. By doing this, the degree of face threat can be minimized. It is easily found that the distribution of offering the hope of NS and NNS is very similar about the situation refusal from Table 5. However, the percentage of two groups choosing these three strategies are very different, especially between Alternative and Conditional choices. It means that both NNS and NS are likely to use the strategy of Alternative much more than Conditional Acceptance. From Table 5, we can see that the two groups of subjects use almost the same strategy in the Future Acceptance.

Adjuncts to Refusals
There are four adjuncts to refuse: gratitude, wish, pause filler and positive opinion. The function of these four strategies is to help minimize the face-threatening when the speakers use the speech act of refusal. That is to say, they cannot express the refuser's real meaning only by themselves. According to Table 6, we can see that Chinese speakers use all the adjuncts to refuse more often than Australian speakers. Language culture and social culture is the main requirement to use the speech act of refusal. As for Chinese speakers, it is difficult for them to behave properly in all situations though they have studied the language for quite a few years.

Discussion
Through the study examining the different description and analyses of the refusal strategies, we find that in appropriateness the choice of strategies. As mentioned in a literature review, pragmatic failures are classified into two categories: pragma linguistic and sociodramas failure. From the questionnaire, the Chinese and Australian participants always meet the failures when they have to refuse others.

Pragma linguistic Failures
Pragma linguistic failure refers to using the target language inappropriately or misunderstanding others' utterances in some situations. It can be divided into two parts: (1)Wrong use of the target language's expressions When Chinese EFL students meet some situations that they are not familiar with, they would often use the wrong expressions or just translate Chinese expressions mechanically into English without consideration of their appropriateness in the English context. Both the two parts of pragma linguistic failure are related to language itself.
When Chinese EFL students meet some situations that they are not familiar with, they would often use the wrong expressions or just translate Chinese expressions mechanically into English without consideration of their appropriateness in the English context.
(2) Unsuccessful refusal There are many examples that the participants don't know how to refuse. For example in situation 7 (Your professor, inviting you to a party to celebrate students who are graduating this year.). Chinese subjects even don't know how to refuse. Because in Chinese culture, people tend to submit to people whose social status is higher than theirs. They believe that professors' or the superior's order is more important than anything. However, native English speakers hold different opinions.
From these examples, we can see that these subjects did not make a successful refusal. Their words do not express any refusing meaning. So, in cross-cultural communication, the refuse would think the refuser takes his or her offer, suggestion, request or invitation. But in fact, these subjects just do not know how to express themselves properly. They know clearly that the refusal is not polite to refuse face to face, so they just pretend to accept, but later on, they do not take the invitation, request, suggestion or offer. This kind of doing does not conform to the target language convention. Because English is much more direct than Chinese in some expressions.

Sociodramas Failure
Sociodramas failure refers to the misunderstanding caused by cultural differences. It consists of violating the target language conventions and violating the target language's cultural conventions.
(1)Violating the target language conventions In this situation, both the two answers are representatives of Chinese thinking patterns. They believe that they should be loyal to their groups. Everyone in this group should be on average. This kind of pragmatic failure can be attributed to cultural difference. Sociodramas failures are relatively difficult to overcome. So, it is necessary to help students get rid of their pragmatic failures and achieve successful pragmatic performance.
(2) Violating the target language's cultural conventions Cultural difference is thought as the main cause that led to sociodramas failures. In most situations, both two answers are representatives of Chinese thinking patterns. They believe that they should be loyal to their groups. Everyone in this group should be on average. This kind of pragmatic failure can be attributed to cultural influence.

Conclusion
The findings imply that there are more common points than different ones between the Chinese participants and Australian speakers when they make refusals. From the questionnaire, the two countries' participants always intend to choose the indirect refusal strategies rather than the direct strategy. Both Chinese and Australian university students prefer to use the strategies of reason, apology and statement of alternative when using indirect strategies. What's more, both Chinese and Australian speakers use either only one refusal strategy or a combination of at least two or more of them in one situation. From the analysis of the refusal patterns of pragmatic failures, we can easily probe that because of the different cultural perspectives, Chinese and Australian university students always have different responses in the same situation when they want to refuse others. Pragma linguistic and sociodramas failures are the two main categories of pragmatic failures in refusing others. And according to the different cultural perspectives, people always misuse refusing strategies.
Although the DCT has been confirmed to be the most effective instrument to collect data quickly and in large amounts, it is difficult to know how the participants would respond in the actual conversation and the DCT does not offer repetitions, the emotional depth and body language as in natural situations. Also, the participants would give themselves psychological hints that their responses would be analyzed, which may influence the responses to some extent. The second limitation is reflected in the generalization of the research results. At present, all Chinese subjects in the study are confined to a relatively small group of EFL learners and their selection of refusal strategies may be different from people of other personalities or values. Besides, the number of native English speakers is small. Generally speaking, the quantity of the subjects may not be large enough to make the results more believable and representative.
Suggestions for further study on the pragmatic failures of Chinese subjects are given out to avoid the limitations listed above. Firstly, some other instruments in addition to DCT should be used in the process of data collection,the disadvantage of DCT and the DCT also should be designed close to their daily life. Secondly, further study should be based on a large sample of subjects to ensure that the result may be more representative and believable. Future study needs to be extended to investigate the speech act of refusal from the hearers' point of view. All in all, despite these limitations listed above, the author still hopes that the study in this paper can inspire further research in this field.
Education and Communication of Jingchu University of Technology.