摘要

“拒绝”是一个非常普遍且敏感的言语行为，与主张建立、维持礼让的社会目标相反，本质上是不礼貌的，是一种面子威胁行为。不同社会、文化背景下的人，由于其价值观、世界观、民族性格、历史、地理环境等条件的差异，对“拒绝”这一言语行为有着不同的社会规范或语用规则，二语学习者、跨文化交际者掌握这种言语行为比较困难。因此了解中美拒绝言语行为上的差异以及这些差异存在的文化背景原因，将有助于恰当地选择使用拒绝语的语义成份，从而提高英语学习者的跨文化交际能力。
  本文基于言语行为理论和礼貌原则，以中美两国大学生为研究对象，采取调查问卷形式，分析对比中美拒绝语义公式，研究社交语用在拒绝言语行为选择上的特点，分析中美拒绝语的文化差异。研究表明，基于不同的社会习俗、文化、社会结构，或者合适条件，中文组和英文组在使用拒绝语义形式时有所不同。

关键词：拒绝；面子；言语行为；语义公式

Abstract

Refusal is a widespread and sensitive language act, which is in contradiction with the social value that insists harmony. It is an impolite and faces threatening act.  Different people with different social and cultural background ,such as value systems, worldview, national characteristics, geographic environment, etc, have different social norms and pragmatic rules of refusal speech act.  These make it be more difficult for the second language learners to master language acts. In order to improve the ability of cross-cultural communication for the English learners, it is important to understand the cultural reasons of the refusal language in Chinese and American which will also contribute to the appropriate choice of the refusal semantic formulas.
This thesis, based on the speech act theory and Leech’s politeness principle, will compare the different speech act and refusal semantic formulas between Chinese and American students. It analysises the characteristics on the choice and the different culture of refusal language between these two countries in order to provide instructions to the second language learners. The results show that the Chinese subjects and the American subjects are different in choosing the diverse semantic formulas as a result of the different social customs, cultures, social structures and other backgrounds.

Key words: refusal; face; speech act; semantic formulas