汉语拒绝策略的性别差异分析-an analysis of gender differences in chinese refusal strategies.docx

AbstractRefusals, as a subclass of speech act, are often used in our daily life. Most of the scholars have investigated the refusal speech act from a cross-cultural perspective and usually in English context. But fewer have studied it from gender differences in Chinese context. This does not correspond with the importance of Chinese language in the international stage. And in this thesis, the author attempts to investigate the refusal speech act from a different perspective---genders in Chinese setting.This thesis is based on an empirical research on the refusals in Chinese context. The data is collected by Discourse Complication Task (DCT) from 150 Chinese speakers‘ university students. Gender differences in this study are investigated from three perspectives---social status, genders of addressee and eliciting speech acts. After the analysis of the data, some differences between male and female students have been observed. In all the situations, it has been found that although both male and female students use more direct no, regret and excuse than other refusal strategies; however, there also exist great differences. For instance, females use more boosters than males when expressing regret and in giving reasons females tend to refuse in an elaborated and detailed way.According to Brown and Levinson‘s politeness theory and Guo Yueguo‘s politeness maxims, it is found in the present study that women are more polite than men, which is consistent with Holmes‘ view (Holmes, 1995). Furthermore, the present study not only explores the differences between males and females, but also explores their similarities. This is consistent with Li Jingwei‘s view that both differences and similarities between males and females should be considered to study the relationship between language and gender (Li, 1998, 2001, 2002).In this thesis, an attempt has been made to shed light on the gender differences in refusals from a pragmatic point of view．It is hoped that the study can help peo