The speech act of refusal has been widely used in their conversation both in formal and informal situations. However, because of its nature to threaten interlocutor’s face, it is very important people select the appropriate strategies in producing the refusal. There are several factors that influence the strategies. Some of them are social distance, social setting, status of interlocutor, and referential information. This study is an attempt to explore the extent in which the factors influence the production of refusal.Moreover, this research investigates how senior high students make English refusal and whether or not the social factors influence the production of this speech act.
Considering the importance, the writer conducted a research and collected the data using Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The DCT consists of four situations (request, invitation, suggestion, and offer) in twelve items. Each item reflected different dimensions, each which different combinations of social status of interlocutor: high/equal/ low and the social setting: formal/ informal. 53 Discourse Completion Tests completed by second grade of senior high students were used data and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitative analysis was done to find kinds of refusal strategies and quantitative analysis was conducted to find the frequency of refusal strategies. Refusal strategies found were then classified based on the classification of refusal proposed by Beebe et al. (1990)
This study revealed that the most frequent refusal strategies produced are B C. The letters represent B direct (non-performative) and C (excuse, reason, explanations) in request and invitation situations both in direct and indirect strategies. However, two situations namely, offer and suggestion give different result. The situation of offer revealed B direct (non performative) in direct refusal and I C in indirect. In addition, the suggestion situation shows B C in direct refusal and A C in indirect refusal. From these strategies, it can be said that students prefer to use C (excuse, reason, explanations) in their choice of refusal strategies. Besides that, it also found that social dimensions (social, setting, status, and referential information) does not affect their choice.
Finally, the result of this study is expected to give insight to the researchers to include the appropriate ways in producing the refusal strategies based on the social dimensions (status scale , social setting, status of interlocutor, and referential information) before conducting further investigation and to teachers to further plan and design their classroom activities and tasks for more effective results. |