“Thanks for caring about me, but I’m ashamed. I’m so tired.”: Mitigating refusals from a cross-cultural perspective

This study investigated the supportive move strategies used by Iranian English language learners and a group of Anglo-Australian students to mitigate refusals. A discourse completion test (DCT) was used to collect data from the two groups of participants. Focus group interviews (FGI) were also used to investigate social and cultural norms motivating the pragmatic strategies used by the Iranian participants. Unlike the prevalent approach of analysing refusals as a sequence of direct and indirect refusals and adjuncts to refusals in previous studies of refusals, in this study refusals were considered as combination of head acts and supportive move strategies accounting for different function of semantic formulas in determining the illocutionary force of a response as a refusal. The findings showed that the mitigation strategies used to soften refusals vary cross-culturally. The performance of the two groups differed in terms of frequency, content and type of supportive move strategies. Also, the strategies used by the Iranian participants at times reflected the Persian cultural schemas of tă’ărof (ritual politeness) and sharmandegi (being ashamed) distinguishing their responses from those of the Australian group. The FGI data also confirmed that the Iranian participants relied on their first language cultural norms and schemas to enhance the face of the interlocutor while giving refusals in English.