Date

2003

Author

Demir, Serpil

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This study investigated the existence of bi-directional transfer in pragmatic abilities of Turkish users of English in their refusal strategies in terms of the frequency of direct and indirect refusal strategies, types and frequencies of the indirect strategies, and the role of the interlocutor's status in strategy choice. To this end, 30 Turkish users of English were given a discourse completion questionnaire in English and 30 Turkish users of English were given the Turkish translation iiiof the same questionnaire in Turkish which consisted of 12 situations which may require a refusal: three suggestions, three invitations, three requests, and three offers. For each of these four groups of situations, the subjects were in interaction with one higher, one equal, and one lower status interlocutor. In order to be able to investigate the existence of transfer, 30 native speakers of English and 30 native speakers of Turkish were given the same questionnaire, in English and in Turkish, respectively. Then, the data obtained from these four respondent groups were compared with regard to the points of investigation. The results showed that, even though some similarities are observed among the subject groups, generally, Turkish users of English employed similar refusal strategies in both their target and native language responses, in a manner different from the native speakers of either language. In addition, it was observed that the interlocutor's status was an important factor in strategy choice for all respondent groups.

Subject Keywords

Interlanguage (Linguistics), Pragmatics, Linguistics, Bi-directional transfer, Multicompetence, Interlanguage pragmatics, Refusals

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/13369

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis