Perceptions of Refusals to Invitations: Exploring the Minds of Foreign Language Learners

Abstract

Descriptions of speech act realisations of native and non-native speakers abound in the cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics literature. Yet, what is lacking is an analysis of the cognitive processes involved in the production of speech acts. This study examines the cognitive processes and perceptions of learners of Spanish when refusing invitations from a person of equal and higher status. Twenty male native speakers (NSs) of US English who were advanced learners of Spanish as a foreign language participated in two refusal interactions with two NSs of Spanish. The perception data were collected through retrospective verbal reports immediately after the role-play task. Results showed that these reports were instrumental in gathering relevant information about learners' cognitive processes with regard to: (1) cognition (attention to information during the planning and execution of a refusal), in particular attention to politeness, discourse, grammar and vocabulary; (2) the selection of the language of thought (English and Spanish) for conveying pragmatic intent; and (3) the perception of insistence after refusing an invitation. The study aims at informing researchers and teachers of the kinds of language-learning (metacognitive) and language-use (retrieval and cover strategies) strategies that learners use to communicate pragmatic intent.

Keywords:

• Perception
• retrospective verbal reports
• refusals
• learner strategies

Notes

1. Although length of stay in the target community may influence learners' speech-act performance (Matsumura, 2001; Olshtain & Blum-Kulka, 1985), due to the learners' varied lengths of stay in the target culture, this variable was not analysed in this study.