A linguistic study of refusal strategies used by advanced Iraqi learners of English

Abstract EN

This study focuses on investigating what strategies advanced Basra learners of English as a foreign language employ to express refusals in English.

It addresses two questions related as to whether the participations in question follow the same English strategies classified by Beebe and others.

(1990) or not, as well as the impact of the gender factor on these strategies.

The study has made use of a modified written discourse completion test (DCT) comprising of eight situations.

The participants are required to provide written data to express their refusals to these situations.

The data gathered have been descriptively analyzed according to the content, frequency and order of semantic formulas used by Beebe et al.

(ibid).

In order to arrive at statistical results, the percentage of the most frequently used strategies was counted.

The findings indicate that advanced Basra learners tend to use more expressions of regret followed by excuses / reasons / explanations.

Most often, they have avoided refusal with “no” except in few cases where it is, also, followed by excuses or explanations.

With the exceptions of some differences and variances, it has been found that the strategies used by female participants were not very much different from those followed by the males.