INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATICS OF REFUSAL STRATEGIES AMONG EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATICS OF REFUSAL STRATEGIES AMONG EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Summary/Abstract: This paper investigates the language forms of refusals produced by two groups of Englishas a Foreign Language students: native Turkish speakers and native Macedonian speakers. Refusals are complexspeech acts that have a large impact on the communication between EFL speakers. These acts can threateninterpersonal relationships and require the ability to use a range of pragmatic strategies to maintain politeness andsocial harmony. The analyzed data were gathered through an online discourse completion task that includedmultiple situations with various contexts and different social relations between the interlocutors. The participantsof the study are specifically first-year university students who are learning English as a foreign language. Theresponses are analyzed following the framework of Beebe, L.M., Takahashi, T., & Uliss-Weltz, R. (1990). Themain aim of the paper is to explore the pragmatic strategies used to convey refusals and to examine the role ofsocial variables in shaping refusals. The initial findings show slight shifts in the refusal forms and strategies useddue to shifts in social factors. The research highlights the complexity of refusals as communicative acts andcontributes to the field of interlanguage pragmatics by offeThis paper investigates the language forms of refusals produced by two groups of Englishas a Foreign Language students: native Turkish speakers and native Macedonian speakers. Refusals are complexspeech acts that have a large impact on the communication between EFL speakers. These acts can threateninterpersonal relationships and require the ability to use a range of pragmatic strategies to maintain politeness andsocial harmony. The analyzed data were gathered through an online discourse completion task that includedmultiple situations with various contexts and different social relations between the interlocutors. The participantsof the study are specifically first-year university students who are learning English as a foreign language. Theresponses are analyzed following the framework of Beebe, L.M., Takahashi, T., & Uliss-Weltz, R. (1990). Themain aim of the paper is to explore the pragmatic strategies used to convey refusals and to examine the role ofsocial variables in shaping refusals. The initial findings show slight shifts in the refusal forms and strategies useddue to shifts in social factors. The research highlights the complexity of refusals as communicative acts andcontributes to the field of interlanguage pragmatics by offering insights into how cultural background andcontextual factors shape refusal behavior among EFL learners.

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