Responses to refusals of requests: Face threat and persistence, persuasion and forgiving statements

Wilson et al.'s (1998) revision of politeness theory has been applied to requesting, refusing and relational development, finding that different types of face threat are present in an interaction depending on the interaction goals. This investigation seeks to extend Wilson et al.'s (1998) work by determining how threats to a speaker's and hearer's face needs influence a requester's desire to persist and use of persuasion and forgiving statements after refusal. Results indicate that refusals creating greater threat to the positive and negative face needs of requesters yield greater desire to persist and use of persuasion statements. Specific face threats did not appear to be related to use of forgiving statements.

Key concepts:

• refusals
• politeness theory
• face threat
• persistence