Abstract

This study dealt with refusal expressions of six languages in Asia: Japanese, Indonesian, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, and Chinese. The purpose of this study is to examine whether there is a relationship between the occurring order of semantic formulas (SFs) and the language structure. A SF is an analyzing unit for speech acts such as refusal or apology that allows us to compare these expressions between languages. In the refusal expressions there are elements such as “reason,” “apology,” “suggestion,” and “refusal.” The result of correspondence analysis showed that head-initial languages have a strong tendency to use “refusal” before another SF. It also showed that head-final languages have a tendency to use “refusal” at the end of the expression. The analyses of variance (ANOVA) were also conducted toward the level of closeness of each language data. The results of the ANOVA showed that the respondents also change their way of refusing depending on their closeness to the requester.