| Abstract [eng] |
Lithuanian Linguistic Politeness: Refusals This study investigates Lithuanian linguistic politeness when refusing a request. Linguistic politeness is defined as an application of certain communicative strategies in order to ensure smooth communication, respectful or friendly relations between interlocutors. Refusal is a speech act by which the speaker denies to engage in an action proposed by the interlocutor. It is a complicated, face-threatening speech act, which requires mitigation by employing various politeness strategies. The aim of this study is to investigate the strategies, substrategies and additional components of Lithuanian refusals of requests. The research data consists of refusals collected with a discourse completion test. 100 students participated in the research, 1046 refusals were analyzed. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were combined in data analysis. The paper consists of two parts – theoretical and applied. The theoretical part discusses the concept of linguistic politeness, provides detailed presentation of Brown and Levinson's linguistic politeness theory, discusses the relationship between direct / indirect refusals and politeness, and provides classifications of the head acts of refusals, their internal as well as external modifications (pre-refusals and post-refusals). Based on these classifications, a study was carried out, the results of which are presented in the second part of the paper. First, the head acts were analyzed, followed by their internal modifications, and finally, – the complementary semantic components were examined. Summarizing the results, it can be stated that Lithuanians mostly use indirect refusals. If they refuse directly, they choose the least straightforward strategy (I can’t). Usually refusals (especially direct ones) are mitigated with the external modifications (rather than internal). The most socioculturally acceptable polite way to refuse is to apologize and provide reasons. These findings should be further examined by studying larger and more diverse groups and using different data collection methods. Despite its limitations, this study can be relevant to scientists of linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics and linguo-didactics. |
