Refusal strategies of Turkish pre-service teachers of English: A focus on gender and status of the interlocutor

In today’s world, the great demand for using English entails language users to be pragmatically competent so that they could adapt themselves to differing requirements of various contexts. Within those contexts, some factors such as the culture of the target language, the speech act used in the interaction, status and gender of the interlocutors are accepted as essential components. Refusals, one of the most difficult speech acts to perform based on their face threatening nature, were chosen as the main concern of the present study. In an attempt to find out what kind of refusal strategies are employed by Turkish pre-service teachers of English, 27 first year students (14 males and 13 females) at Çukurova University were randomly chosen. Data for the study were collected via a Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) in which the participants were to respond nine scenarios (three lower, three equal and three higher interlocutors). Data analysis concentrated on two main variables: gender of the participants and the status of the interlocutors. In addition to those, refusal combinations utilized by the participants was another focal point of the study. The whole qualitative data were discussed through descriptive statistics and chi-square analyses, and “excuse, reason, explanation” was found to be the most frequent refusal strategy used by the participants. Another important finding is that males were found to prefer directly uttering “no” more frequently than females. It was also found that the number of the strategy combinations increases as the status of the interlocutor rises.

Türk İngilizce öğretmen adaylarının reddetme stratejileri: Cinsiyet ve muhatabın/konuşulan kişinin statüsü değişkenleri

Günümüzde İngilizce kullanımına gösterilen büyük rağbet dil kullanıcılarının edimsel açıdan yeterli olmalarını gerektirmektedir ki bu onların çeşitli bağlamların farklılaşan gerekliliklerine kendilerini adapte etmelerini sağlayacaktır. Bu bağlamlar içerisinde hedef dilin kültürü, iletişimde kullanılan söz eylem, muhatabın/konuşulan kişinin statüsü ve cinsiyet gibi faktörler önemli kabul edilmektedir. Tehdit/mahcup (itibar gereksinimi) edici doğası gereği kullanması en zor söz eylemlerden olan reddetme bu çalışmanın odak noktası olarak belirlenmiştir. Türk İngilizce öğretmen adaylarının ne tür reddetme stratejilerini kullandıklarını ortaya çıkarmak adına Çukurova Üniversitesi’nden 27 birinci sınıf öğrencisi (14 erkek ve 13 kız öğrenci) rastgele seçilmiştir. Veriler katılımcıların dokuz farklı senaryoda (3 alt, 3 eşit, 3 yüksek statülü muhatap) diyalog tamamlamalarını içeren yazılı bir söylem tamamlama testi ile toplanmıştır. Veri analizi ise iki ana değişken olan katılımcıların cinsiyeti ile konuşulan kişinin/muhatabın statüsü üzerinden gerçekleştirilmiştir. Bunlara ek olarak, katılımcıların ne tür reddetme stratejilerini bir arada kullandıkları da bu çalışmanın bir diğer odak noktası olmuştur. Elde edilen bütün nitel veriler tanımlayıcı istatistik ve ki-kare analizleri ışığında tartışılmış ve “mazeret, sebep, açıklama” stratejisinin katılımcılar tarafından en sık kullanılan reddetme stratejisi olduğu bulunmuştur. Bir diğer önemli bulgu ise erkeklerin kız öğrencilere oranla daha sık direkt olarak “hayır” diyebildikleri gerçeğidir. Ayrıca muhatabın/konuşulan kişinin statüsü yükseldikçe reddetme stratejilerinin kombinasyon sayılarının da arttığı saptanmıştır.

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